I'm not sure if I'm spelling it right RODIDIES?
RODITIES?
A Greek place in Chicago. The thing I remember most is that the ceiling had burn marks on it. They would serve a cheese dish where they woould light a flame to it to burn off the alcohol and the flame would reach the ceiling.

John

I'm not sure if I'm spelling it right RODIDIES?
RODITIES?
A Greek place in Chicago. The thing I remember most is that the ceiling had burn marks on it. They would serve a cheese dish where they woould light a flame to it to burn off the alcohol and the flame would reach the ceiling.

John

I'm not sure if I'm spelling it right RODIDIES?
RODITIES?
A Greek place in Chicago. The thing I remember most is that the ceiling had burn marks on it. They would serve a cheese dish where they woould light a flame to it to burn off the alcohol and the flame would reach the ceiling.

John

I'm not sure if I'm spelling it right RODIDIES?
RODITIES?
A Greek place in Chicago. The thing I remember most is that the ceiling had burn marks on it. They would serve a cheese dish where they woould light a flame to it to burn off the alcohol and the flame would reach the ceiling.

John

I'm not sure if I'm spelling it right RODIDIES?
RODITIES?
A Greek place in Chicago. The thing I remember most is that the ceiling had burn marks on it. They would serve a cheese dish where they woould light a flame to it to burn off the alcohol and the flame would reach the ceiling.

John

Probably dinner at Fearrington House near Chapel Hill (we go there on our anniversary - unfortunately, the past two years indicate that they've lost their touch a bit, so we won't return), lunch at Le Bec Fin in Philadelphia, seafood dinner at Fins in Raleigh.

Craig

At Scoozi's in Chicago I had a tuna steak served with linguine. It was all covered with this very light tomato/garlic sauce...mmmmm! It was a special that night and on my very few return trips it was never offered again. Shucks!

Here in Utah the best places I've eaten at were in Park City. The resturant at the Westgate was great! I had an amazing stuffed pork chop with a potato Agratin that was layers of regular and sweet potatoes. My husband had buffalo tenderloin that was quite tasty, and the dessert----Oh my Gosh!!! Chocolate Souflee hot from the oven with some ice cream on the side---the first dessert I've ever had that I have actually fantasized about. In Puerto Rico, we ate at one of Chef Trevinos resurants in Old San Juan that was amazing. (We saw him on Iron chef America) Unfortunately, with small kids and a tight budget we only get out to a nice resturant a couple times a year.

The best food I've ever eaten has all been in little hole-in-the-wall cafe's in small towns. I used to travel as a territory manager for a livestock feed company and learned to stop for lunch wherever there were lots of pickups with hay bale spears on them. The food almost always tasted like Mom made it and there was almost always more than I could eat. I stopped at a little cafe in the Flint Hills of Southern Kansas once, found an item on the menu called "The Thing". It was $3.95 so I ordered it. It turned out to be a 3/4 pound cheese-burger with the works, (garden fresh tomato slices, too) a HUGE order of french fries and a dish of ice cream. I thought I was going to explode.

Best place on the southern West Coast has to be Fiori's of Occidental, CA, little town up in the redwood country around Santa Rosa. The food was Italian and family style when I was there in July 1972. No individual tables but long wooden mess hall type. Food never stopped coming! Just did a Google check on it and it's still there but now mainly Mexican cuisine.

Up in the Puget Sound area, has to be any of the 3 main Ivar's "Acres of Clams" restaurants. In 1978, actually did the "trifecta" and ate in all 3 in one week!

Martin

I have attended two different year sessions at the cooking school at The Greenbrier Hotel in White Sulphur Springs, WV; this was some years ago when I was working. The Greenbrier is rated one of the top ten hotels in the world. Breakfast was always a treat! Our lunches were the items prepared during the morning sessions. Dinner was fantastic -- the menu was changed each day. One of the great experiences was on the last night there the class was served dinner comparable to a State Dinner At the White House. Unbelievable!
http://www.greenbrier.com/site/default.aspx
The LaVareen Cook School now handles the culinary classes
Months March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October
Contact Riki Senn
Cooking School Director
The Greenbrier
300 West Main St.
White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia 24986
Emphasis Contemporary American & International cuisine, culinary technique.
Faculty Anne Willan, founder & director of Ecole de Cuisine La Varenne, food columnist, TV show food host, & author of 12+ cookbooks; Greenbrier chefs; guest food personalities.
Facilities The Greenbrier Culinary Arts Center.
Recipe Archives for the LaVarenne Cooking School at the Greenbrier Hotel. Cook up something good! Enjoy!
Gary/Louisville

LaVareene Recipe Archives
http://www.lavarenne.com/recipes/index.htm

Probably not the best, but I think the most fun, was Black Bart's Steak House in Flagstaff, AZ. Just had to try their fried ice cream!

-- BC --

I would have to say oysters, crab, and crawfish fresh from the water at "The Outback Crab Shack" in Jacksonville FL. To be honest I don't remember exactly how to get there, but I know it was just behind a country store situated on the side of the road right next to a river.

You walk through the store and onto the back porch wher it opens up into a huge screened-in room with picnick tables. The kitchen is an island in the middle of all the tables. We just had a seat, ordered a bucket of Corona's and waited on the mud buggs (crawfish). When they arrived, our server placed news paper on the table, then emptied the pot-o-crawdads on the table.

We asked the waitress how they kept the place clean. She said they just spray the whole thing down with a hose every night and it is good to go. I think the relaxed atmosphere, (and maybe the Coronas) made the food taste even better.

The Pink Door, a restaurant in the Seattle Pike Place Market. I haven't been in years. Don't know if it is still there, but if it is, it's worth a visit for sure! Creative, delicious cooking. There was a seafood place in west Seattle too. Can't remember the name, (not Ivars) but it was obviously a place mostly locals visited. Took a while to get into. An uncle of mine took my mother and me there. Just terrific.

In Eugene, Oregon, Chanterelle. Used to serve lunch and dinner. Now only dinner and you do need a reservation or you're sunk. Fabulous food.

Mary

In Lincoln,Ne there is a Italian buffet called Valentino's that has one of the largest buffets with the most variety I have seen. The food is great and best of all it is all you can eat which is my style. The food rivals any from any menu ordered Italian from any big city restuarant.

Best of all was a restaurant in Woodstock, NY where my employers took me for dinner (not the kind of thing my budget runs to). I ordered roast chicken but this was roast chicken carried to the nth degree, tender and moist with a gravy made from condensed stock and some ethereal veggies. The dessert was a fruit tart that was out of this world.
Close second was lunch at the Culinary Institute in Hyde Park, NY.
And third would have been a champagne brunch at the Beekman Arms in Rhinebeck where I mostly had fresh fruit and brie (my usual breakfast these days though not with champagne) but splurged on bananas Foster for dessert.
I'm happy to say I have a lifetime of good meals to look back on as I dutifully stick to a restricted diet.

The best restaurant I've ever dined at is Babo in New York City. It is a very authentic Italian restaurant owned by one of my favorite chefs, Mario Batali. A close second would be the French Laundry in Napa, California.

Best restaurant / food ?

Philly, PA - Morimoto
(Morimoto is the Japanese Iron Chef from the Food Network - 1 Month in advance RSVP.)

The $120.00 Omakase
( 8 course dinner, meaning "put yourself into the hands of the chef" - met him, super cool guy, and got pics taken )

They keep your name(s) on file, so its never the same ~ unreal ... Tom

I know it's not fancy but

Lone Star in Manhattan Ks
Chicken Fried steak

I'm a culinary cretin. I prefer restaurant meals from the seventies. Surf n' turf, Carpetbag Steak (stuffed with a dozen oysters)' crayfish (lobster) themidor, crayfish mornay.
Due to the onset of the Pacific Rim cuisine over here all these goodies are off the menu.
Shame.
Glenn

The Red Fox at Snowshoe, WV ski resort. An absolutly delish meal (fresh water stream trout). Perfect! And the dessert melt in your mouth - a chocolate mouse custard (but cannot remember the exact name). Best restaurant meal I ever had.

Second, but not by much, was lunch at Bob KinkeadÂs Colvin Run Tavern. Had a wonderful seafood salad, chilled, with mango, avocado and a few other wonderful tasting ingredients. We just loved it!

Here is a link that might be useful: Colvin Run Tavern

White Castle..LOL Just kidding. The Clam Broth House in Hoboken NJ. Don't even know if it's still there.

At a tiny - sat 6 - outside restaurant near Bangkok. For about 25 cents we got mounds of fresh stir fried veggies and rice - spicy, fragrant, delicious.
As we ate we noticed the dishes being washed by an old man in a boat - he was leaning over the side of the boat washing them in the river. As we watched children were swimming in the river, women were washing clothes, 2 dead dogs floated by, and a little kid was peeing.
The food was so good we ate there again. I can still, 15 years later, remember the smell of that food.
Second best - right up the road at the neighboring farm. The people there are now dead and gone, but the piles of mashed potatoes smothered by home made chicken and noodles, hot rolls with real butter from cream from the jersey cow - my god it was good! Most of it is still stuck to my thighs - but worth every pound!
Guess that second one isn't a restaurant, but when you are young and have just bought a farm - you sure can't afford to go out to a restaurant, so going out to dinner anywhere surly counts.

Fried fish, crusty bread, and Cokes at a small outdoor restaurant on the island of Rhodes off the coast of Turkey. As I recall, it was something like a farmhouse rather than a bona fide restaurant. The sky was the bluest of blues, the Mediterranean still another shade of blue. A couple of cats were passing the time on the low, white-washed wall next to our table. The menu consisted of: fried fish, crusty bread, and Cokes. And they were delicious. As I think back on the meals that stick in my mind, it's rarely because of the food alone but rather the location, occasion, and the friends and family I'm with.

--Ruth

Ruth, how true ..how true. I don't frequent big-time fancy places, well...for one I'm cheap...sorta. Got my own priorities on how my money gets spent like everybody else. Expensive dinners aren't on my must-list I suppose.

My wife and I have travelled fairly extensively because we have both been involved in the travel industry for a number of years, and meals that bring back memories have as much to do with the location as the food.

Sitting at an open air restaurant in St.John with the sea air and the stars above....don't remember what I ate, but I remember the night and being with my DW.

Speaking of being cheap though LOL....I remember an open air cafe in Cozumel across from the marketplace. It was so dadblasted hot that I think I sucked down 4 or 5 beers...had tacos and some of the best salsa I have ever eaten....Laurie had a burger (go figure) and a few diet cokes. The tab came to 4.85 US. My kinda meal at my kinda price.

Duane

I thought of a better one, because my wife reminded me by asking if I wanted to go for my b-day

Piropo's serves Argentine style food in Parkville, Mo with an view of the Missouri River and downtown KC.

Here is a link that might be useful: Piropo's

Dukerdawg, I *DO* like fancy places if I'm not picking up the tab (frugal Dutch person that I am). But here's another memorable "meal"--a Taco Bell Supreme taco in Holland, Mich. My DH and I were on our way back to Kalamazoo from a trip up north along the Lake Michigan shoreline and I was so, so hungry. He had mercy on me and pulled into Taco Hell. Ate the taco standing out in the parking lot, next to the car. De-licious. Funny, though, they've never been as good since.

And then there was the restaurant here in the St. Louis area where I asked if they had any local beers and the waiter replied, in all due sincerity, that they had Budweiser. St. Louis is, of course, the home of Anheuser Busch. D'oh!

--Ruth

Since we're changing our minds. Let me just say there was a restaurant on 14th St. in NYC that had been there since the late 1800's called Luchow's. German food. All the luminaries of the day(s) went there, Diamond Lil, Fiorello LaGuardia etc etc. Huge tall ceilings of carved dark wood, these different levels, bannisters separating the areas, oil paintings. A certain scent, absolutely delicious, permeated the air. At Christmas (Christmas again!) they had a marvelous tall tree in one of the rooms decorated with traditional German ornaments and a toy train that ran around the base. The Weiner Schnitzel was fantastic, the home fries uncopyable, white asparagus, but I suspect the best thing (which oddly enough I'm going to semi-reproduce tonight) was the German pancake for dessert. Huge the size of a large pizza and baked in the oven, slathered in cinnamon sugar and lemon juice with lingonberries. You could have it flambeed so of course that meant you were the center of attention.

They tore it down. Great NYC landmark like that, gone.

Barb,

Thanks for the picture of Luchows. I have an old Luchows cookbook. Not by August Luchow of course, but by the fellow who may have been it's last owner. Recipes from various chefs at Luchows, including the original chef as I recall. I have not made anything from it for a while, but worth looking for at a used book store or perhaps on line. The German pancake recipe is there too. Was just going through my cookbooks trying to find it. Haven't found it yet, but I have a lot of cookbooks. Again, thanks for the neat picture.

Mary

Found the cookbook. It's called: Luchow's German Cookbook-by Leonard Jan Mitchell. C 1952. Publisher-Doubleday and Company, Inc., Garden City, New York.

Mary

Mary, I have that cookbook, too, and when I was searching for a photo to post, I discovered a copy of this book is worth about $75. Not that I'd ever part with mine.

I remember Jan Mitchell standing at the entrance greeting people. My father knew him well as he'd lived in the neighborhood for many years and it was about 5 blocks from where we lived. (Yes, I'm originally a city girl but that was a very long time ago.)

Maybe I could put some of the Macouns I have in the fridge into the dehydrator today. But they must have done something else with them when reconstituting them, soaked them in May wine or something as they tasted better than simply apples.

I discovered that you can make an excellent backhendl using Japanese breadcrumbs, Panko. Try it. Squeeze lemon juice on it before serving. Very close to the real thing.

Thanks Barb. I had no idea it was worth so much. Mine is quite stained with use and the spine probably needs a little fixing. So it's probably not worth $75 I expect. Got a neat Leone's cookbook too. Written by Mama Leone's son. Another well stained/used book. Thanks for info about the panko crumbs.

Mary

That Mama Leone's one is worth about $40--probably in better condition. There's a cookbook by Vincent Price that's worth a couple hundred. And a candy cookbook by Zasu Pitts that's pricey. I used to sell collectible books so I know a little, a very little about this part. You can run searches at www.abebooks.com to check these things out for yourself.

My lawyer used to take me to both the Russian Tea Room and an Italian place across 57th St.---Fontana di Trevi maybe--and I'd have the most delicious Osso Buco. Years later I was going through a box of books I acquired to sell and stuck between the pages was the recipe for the Osso Buco right on the restaurant's stationery! Boy, what a find!

My #1 top favorite for food is Lebanese Taverna. I just go and order mezze, no entree, so it's even better with a group and you can sample just a little of a lot of things. The fatayer bel jibne, the hummus with ground meat and almonds, the shankleesh, the tabbouleh, the kibbeh, the m'saka, Um Ali for dessert, YUM.

For atmosphere, Marrakesch, where they also serve a really good fixed-price seven-course dinner (I especially love the chicken in a pastry with powdered sugar on top - odd and delicious combination). It's an experience: to start with, from the street, the name of the restaurant only appears in Arabic, not English. You can't open the front door from the outside, you have to knock and they open it for you from inside. It's an old converted warehouse, so no windows and you really step into a different world when you go in: you sit on low, cushioned benches, and the waiters kneel when they come to your table, the walls are covered in oriental carpets, your party eats from a common bowl and there's no silverware, just bread to scoop with, and there's a belly-dancer who comes out midway through the meal. It's popular -- on a typical Friday night they bring out birthday cake 4 or 5 times for different guests. Then back in the hallway where the bathrooms are, there are pictures of all the celebrities who've eaten there. Along with various Presidents and other pols (this is DC, remember), the one I remember is of Cher with Greg Allman -- the place has been there for a while!

And one more deserving mention: the "lomitos", steak sandwiches ubiquitous in every hole in the wall in Buenos Aires. Argentine beef has got to be the best in the world!

Probably the best meal my wife & I had was in the "San Souci" in Washington, DC. It's doors are now closed but back then 25 years ago or so it was THE place for all the Congressmen & political shakers & movers to dine.
LD

My husband was military and I have had many excellant meals in Germany. However, my favorite place in the USA is in Ft. Worth, Texas. It's a Greek restaurant called The Parthenon and run by 2 brothers, Gus and Peter. The food is so flavorful and even though it's a 3 hour drive from here, I have managed to eat there twice a year since I "discovered" it. I was flipping through the phonebook and gave them a call to see if they sounded authentic. One of the owners answered and told me if there was anything I did not like, I would not have to pay for it. Wow! How's that for confidence. But he was right..not a thing I didn't like. The last time I was there I had a convoy of 9 people with who fell in love with the place as well. Chicken, gyros, basmati rice, saganaki opa...mmmmmmmm. I am gainign weight just thinking of it.

It's on Henderson right across from the Radio Shack headquarters.

~Heidi

If you like Lobster - forget Red Lobster's lobster and go to (of all places) The Outback. Outback's lobster (steamed) is so tender it's like eating crab meat. Red L on the other hand has always been the toughest dang meat I ever chewed on. And at Outback you can add a 3rd tail for $4.49 to the 2 tail dinner (~$22 + ex tail)

Lobster Tail and other stuff I never heard of at The Culinary Institute of America Hyde Park, NY.

The one my brother-in-law finally bought