Food and Dining Thread

[Cincydawg]

How much is the food, and how much is the experience?  I think a lot is the latter, the locale, setting, being outside, nice temperatures, pretty servers dressed alluringly, ...

[FearlessF]

How much is the food, and how much is the experience?  I think a lot is the latter, the locale, setting, being outside, nice temperatures, pretty servers dressed alluringly, ...

Bone Daddy's!!

[utee94]

She's prolly never been back


[img width=352.997 height=500]https://i.imgur.com/JOA13Qn.png[/img]

I grew up hating green beans.  My mom always made them either frozen or from the can.  I thought they sucked both ways.

Then one time when I was maybe 14 or 15, my mom actually made fresh snapped green beans.  I turned up my nose but my folks asked me to just give them a try.  And I'm glad I did, because I discovered that I LOVED fresh snapped green beans.  Of course, when my mom realized how much I liked them, she turned the snapping into MY chore, but that's okay.  She usually took a little time to help me, while she was doing other stuff.

So although I never had the pleasure of snapping beans with my grandma, I have gotten to snap them with my own mom, many times.

[OrangeAfroMan]

I prefer canned to fresh.  I probably have a minimum sodium requirement.

[Cincydawg]

Canned green beans were about the only green veggie my kids would eat, so we had them often.  So, I get fancy and buy fresh green beans and they were good, and the kids hated them, wouldn't eat them.  I'm a big believer in cruciferous vegetables and cook them often and like all of them.

[MarqHusker]

The world's best lunch remains a shorelunch on the waters of W- NW Ontario.  Walleye,  pike, bluegill and lake trout caught in the preceding hours, fried with baked beans, potatoes, raw onions s&p a nd your favorite hot sauce.  Bread optional and a cold beer.

[MrNubbz]

Lake Nippissing way back in the Day 😎

[Cincydawg]

The world's best lunch remains a shorelunch on the waters of W- NW Ontario.  Walleye,  pike, bluegill and lake trout caught in the preceding hours, fried with baked beans, potatoes, raw onions s&p a nd your favorite hot sauce.  Bread optional and a cold beer.

I hear the fly in fishing trips come up with some incredible lunches too, fresh fish is always astonishingly good in part because it is so "rare" in most of the country.

Why do we have Red Lobsters on any coastal city?  Hmmmm.  Or Captain D's?

I'm always a bit sad to see so many Starbucks in Paris.

I saw a Pizza Hut in Rome.

[Cincydawg]

A large difference between France (and Europe I suspect) and the US is that a hotel restaurant here is to be avoided with few exceptions.  A hotel restaurant in France often is superb, not just good, but worth a trip.  Here they usually are over priced and boring, maybe "OK" but hardly worth a trip.  

We pulled into Chablis Feb 2020 on a Sunday a bit hungry and the wife warned me, again, that nothing might be open for lunch.  McDonalds, which I was prepared to dine at, was closed.  I drove around a bit, it's a small town, and found a motel that was open and we had a superb lunch.  They offered a premier grand cru for 80 euros and it was superb (duh).  Aside from being great food, the service was superb and the presentation was first rate.  How often would you drive a few miles to dine at a motel restaurant in the US?  There would be a few special ones, but in general nyet.

Restaurant (hostellerie-des-clos.fr)

Restaurant & bar (hostellerie-des-clos.fr)
Restaurant & bar (hostellerie-des-clos.fr)

[Brutus Buckeye]

[847badgerfan]

This place was fantastic.

Ristorante Benedicta Firenze |

So was this one.

Ambrosia Rooftop Restaurant & Bar - Restaurant Via Nazionale - Rome (hotelartemide.it)
Ambrosia Rooftop Restaurant & Bar - Restaurant Via Nazionale - Rome (hotelartemide.it)


So many great places in Italy. These two were part of the hotels we were staying at. Nothing like a great meal in the countryside though. That's the true spirit of Tuscany, to me.

[utee94]

Yup, I ate a lot of meals in European hotels.  When you're there for 3-4 months at a time, getting out and about for dinner becomes a little exhausting.  Some nights I'd just get back from work around 6, sit down at the bar and have an aperitif or two, and then go into the hotel dining room around 7:30 and grab a fantastic meal.  I was still usually the first one eating, most folks wouldn't come in until 8:30 or 9.  Even later, in Italy.


Phillippe, the bartender at my hotel in Nantes, and I, got to be pretty good friends.  After a while, I realized that he and the hotel staff were eating family style in the otherwise empty dining room around the same time I was getting to the hotel bar, and he'd have to split time bringing me drinks while he was eating.  One day, he invited me to sit down and eat with them.  The staff all got shift meals so there was no cost, and there was no way to pay.  Eating with the staff became a regular thing so I started buying bottles of wine for the staff and having Phillippe write up the check as my dinner so I could still expense it. Those were some amazing meals, just whatever the cook had fresh, he'd serve family style in big dishes, and there was always a huge pile of frites at the center of the table.   Boeuf bourguignon, coq au vin, lapine a la cocette, and of course plenty of steak frites cooked almost raw.

Phillippe even invited me to eat at his home several times.  His wife was British, and his English was perfect, although I did try to practice my French with them.  We cleared out his wine rack more than a couple of times, but I'd take him to the Carrefour and restock him.  I always asked him, "which wine would you recommend for a really important meal?" and he'd point it out, then I'd buy several for him.  Even their very best wines were still cheap by American standards.

Those were the days. 

[Cincydawg]

Wow, great experience.  The wife talks about going over for 3 months sometime, but I don't think she means it.

She talks about registering our marriage so I could get an EU passport in five years.

[utee94]

Wow, great experience.  The wife talks about going over for 3 months sometime, but I don't think she means it.

She talks about registering our marriage so I could get an EU passport in five years.

It was a great experience for sure.  I can only imagine it would be even better getting to spend that much time there, with a native like your wife.  

I was lucky enough to have similar long-term experiences in Belgium, the Netherlands, and Sicily.  And then some shorter visits into Germany mixed in there.  Never did get to anywhere in the UK though, that's on the list.