Djemaa el Fna, Merrakech. The spectacle, the food.

New Orleans for all the love they put into everything they do, especially their food.

Toss up:

Cold, drizzly day in Maine. Hot, milky tea, steaming popovers, and delicate maple syrup at Jordon Pond restaurant looking over the wet lawn.

I traveled cross country with my family when I was 11 and of all the many places we visited the only meal I remember was the cheese sandwiches we made when we were running low on food between grocery trips. Soft wheat bread, Miracle Whip, and slightly sweaty orange cheese slices. Somehow this was supremely satisfying to me!

The tapas bar crawl in San Sebastian, Spain. San Sebastian is known for their tapas and the bars were overflowing with tasty snacks, local wine (txacoli) and cider, and folks out for a relaxed evening on the town with friends.
A tapas "progressive dinner" is now in the works with some friends. :-)

Alike to yours, my fondest memory from food is from my cooking class in Florence, Italy. One of the best experiences. In the beautiful hills of Tuscany we spent our day learning to make pasta and drinking chianti wine. our meal was wonderful, course after course served in a beautiful tuscan home from a lady who spoke only italian. whatever she said it was wonderful going through our ears.

by far my mothers favorite day from our 27 day journey. for me it was definitely one of the best days.

here's my blog post about that day.
http://jessicaraeblog.wordpress.com/2008/06/15/under-the-tuscan-sun/

Cioppino at Tadich Grill in San Francisco :]

Raw herring top with minced onion at a farmer's market in Amsterdam... I think about it everyday! Sooooooo good. So sad that there isn't any fresh herring in the States.
Also jamon in Madrid. Pair it with a 2 Euro beer, HEAVEN!

Sorrento, Italy on my honeymoon at a small dive restaurant. My husband ordered some crazy every seafood imaginable pasta and shocked me cause he's so simple in his food choices and I got a prawn risotto with strips of Sorrento lemon peel in it. It was SO simple but was easily the best thing I ever put in my mouth. Absolutely perfect meal.

I am very picky about how my food is prepared. If I prepare it, I am much more relaxed. I don't like other people choosing how much sauce, or condiments go on my food. I like to add everything myself. ((Hamburger with everything on the side, I'll assemble it myself)) Its totally weird, and uncalled for. BUT, my boyfriend and I went on our first vacation together, and chose Chicago. First stop, Cubs game, naturally I had to get a hot dog. For some reason, I was able to relax and eat a Chicago Style hot dog, EXACTLY the way it was prepared and given to me. No substitutions, no on the side. --- and it was perfect.

I also remember fishing with my grandfather. He had the most unsea worthy vessel I have ever seen, good thing we were on a small lake. He packed the following in the cooler: Fritos, off brand diet soda, Mrs. Baird Bread sandwiches with real mayo, bologna, and bread and butter pickles.

They were DELICIOUS after a boring day on the lake.

I think making yogurt soup with some local students while in Turkey. Tons of fun, and unique and tasty, too.

when I was doing my junior year abroad in england, I found a great deal on a trip to malta during one of our term breaks. it was the off season and I didn't really realize until I got there just how amazing of a hotel it was and what a great deal it was (I was focused on getting someplace warm and far away from my housemates).

the hotel was amazing and dinner was included. the food was incredible--fresh and delicious. it was pretty much italian food, but with a fresher twist to it. I am a vegetarian and after the first night the cook and the hotel manager took me on as their personal challenge--they were so worried that I looked tired and too thin. it was their job to fatten me up and make me happy. that involved a lot of homemade pastas and gnocchi, fresh breads, cheese, and tons of the freshest avocados I have ever had. I also kept having a problem making it to breakfast in the morning so they would save a tray aside--pastries, muesli, and rolls and cheese to make sandwiches.

it was everything I needed--I was tired and stressed and needed someone, or in this case two little surrogate maltese grandfathers, to feed me.

Just got back from a trip to Croatia and Greece. All the food in Croatia was amazing - fresh and CHEAP - but the best food was in Greece. We had a cooking class at Selene (http://www.selene.gr/) and getting to learn about the island produce was fabulous. Good times!

A month of cooking classes in Kerala, Southern India. I just posted recipe and my memories here:
http://www.atthefarmersmarket.com/2010/07/south-indian-green-beans-thoren.html

A month of cooking classes in Kerala, Southern India. I just posted recipe and my memories here:
http://www.atthefarmersmarket.com/2010/07/south-indian-green-beans-thoren.html

Shopping for groceries at Waitrose on Marylebone High Street while studying in London and feeling impossibly posh. Also eating probably mediocre Italian food near Leicester Square, and seeing my first cockroach after an excellent Japanese dinner at my friend's favorite restaurant in the city. I told my friend, and she assured me that they're in basically every restaurant.

Also no coffee will ever be better than the coffee I drank in Paris the first time I traveled abroad.

I have 2:
1. Sitting in who-knows-what restaurant in Amsterdam, with a wall of glass on level with the canals, all decorated crazy with orchids and golden gods and our shoes waiting outside eating the most delicious thai beef salad. We were crying with each bite because it was so spicy, but the flavor was so amazing my husband and I couldn't stop eating it. It made me learn to cook thai, altho I've never been able to recreate that exact spice combo.

2. A train station on the border of Spain and France, on the coast. A simple pair of sandwiches on baguettes and a bottle of wine. To keep a seat (for our 6 hour layover) we had to have a bill over a certain amount, so we ordered the most expensive bottle of wine on the menu, at 25USD a bottle (omg, the exchange rate used to be so awesome). I was expecting something along the lines of Gallo because I figured the prices were inflated, so imagine my surprise when we were served a 25 year old bottle of... (here is where I kick myself for not keeping the label)... that might have been the best red wine I have had before, or since. We'd been in Europe for 6 weeks at that point, so good bread, sandwiches and good wine were no strangers, but damn if that wasn't the absolute best 40USD I have ever spent in my entire life.

One of my strongest food memories is the very first meal I ever ate in France. I was 13, it was Paris, and it was a simple tomato, mozzerella and basil salad. To this day, my favorite meal. 17 years later and it's still one of my most vivid food memories.

@Gvinton: one of my best college girlfriends was married in Acadia last October and had her wedding lunch at Jordon Pond. It was cold, and it started pouring rain when we sat down for lunch, and those pop-overs totally warmed everyone, including the visitors from San Diego!

Two:

1. First ever falafel sandwich came from a tiny shop filled with young Egyptian boys in an alley in Cairo. Not speaking Arabic, I'm sure we were ripped off. But it was amazing and now, no falafel sandwich compares.

2. The bolognese sauce on pasta we were served during dinner at a B&B (complete with horseback riding lessons) in the Tuscan countryside. I have never tasted a sauce so rich and wonderful.

Tibetan yogurt outside temple, freezing cold.

We spent our honeymoon in Zanzibar during Ramadan. For Eid, there was a giant maze of food vendors in a park. We ate every kind of meat and fish on skewers, Zanzibar pizzas, and other little bites. So good. The best part was seeing the local families all dressed up.

An amazing lunch at Napoleon House in New Orleans with my then-boyfriend, now-fiance. It was the first time I went on vacation with his huge family and by the end of the weekend I was feeling a little overwhelmed. We left town a few hours after everyone else, which gave us time to sit in that beautiful old building, next to an open window and order half of the menu with a few Dixies. So delicious and so New Orleans.

...in a tent in the Serengeti--bread baked in an oven made of a metal footlocker; absolutely the best soups ever, every evening under an absolutely perfect starlit sky, with strange sounds in the night...