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Benchmark dishes, or Paradise Lost

What do I mean by benchmark dishes? There are certain ingredients and dishes that, when I see them on a menu, I just cannot resist. And yet, like almost anything in life, there are good examples and bad. Some dishes I have tried in so many restaurants in so many countries that I feel qualified to state categorically: ‘this is the best example I’ve ever tasted’. These are my benchmarks.

I notice, while thinking about this subject, that many of these experiences happened around a decade ago; I don’t think this is a coincidence. Like losing your virginity or smoking your first cigarette, there are some things that can only happen once, and generally happen when you’re young. There’s something about this quality of ‘firstness’ that – over and above the basic stimulation of the senses – is formative of a benchmark experience. Hence Paradise Lost: even if I taste something as good as these in future, it is unlikely that they will ever surpass my benchmarks. I have the nostalgic sense that I can never re-live these moments.

  1. Monkfish: Something about the bite, the resistance to teeth and tongue, the meaty adherence to tail bone, makes monkfish stand out for me on almost any menu. When I was a teenager, my Dad took me to The River Café in London. The monkfish I had was cooked in rosemary, garlic, lemon juice and olive oil that was more virgin than Mary herself. I have never forgotten it.
  2. Carpaccio: When I lived in Paris, aged 18, among the accordion-playing buskers on the Metro, underground entrepreneurs used to sell pamphlets that listed restaurants in which you could eat well for under 100 francs (approx €15) in Paris. One of these restaurants was a Sicilian eatery offering three courses for less than the price of entry to the Louvre. The first of these was the simplest, most honest carpaccio I’ve ever eaten. It was dressed with lemon juice, olive oil and parmesan shavings, without none of the trappings of capers and pine nuts and unnecessary lettuce leaves that overbear every carpaccio I’ve eaten since. I wish I could remember the name or even the location of the restaurant, but nearly ten years ago I had no idea that the memory of the meal would stick with me so much more readily than that of the venue.
  3. Tuna: and by this I obviously mean fresh, not tinned. Tuna is very, very easy to overcook, and overcooking tuna is a sin beyond even overcooking beef. Tuna is meaty and bloody and should be treated with the same rough respect you would afford a venison steak. You may introduce it to the frying pan, but should chaperone it quickly away before it gets too attached. Tuna, uniquely, works extremely well with Asian ingredients – more so than European perhaps. At Le Petit Blanc in Oxford (the small brasserie run by Raymond Blanc when he’s not busy with Les Quatre Saisons or X-factor style restaurant programmes on TV), the chefs know exactly how long to let the fish flirt with the pan, how to get their stir-fried vegetables as crisp in their ‘julienne’ as possible, and how to dress the constituent parts with the minimum of fuss – a squeeze of lime and a dash of soy sauce.
  4. Crème brulee: As John Torode would say on Masterchef, ‘I’m not much of a desserts man, but…’ there’s something about the contrast of hard and crisp against soft and melting that makes it very difficult for me to resist this queen of puddings. A good crème brulee should always be flecked with the black seeds from vanilla pods; the crème part should not be set too firm – it should wobble tantalisingly like the ripe flesh of a woman and not a girl; the brulee part should crack satisfyingly like a hard-boiled egg on contact with the spoon. I came across such a dessert as a teenager, in the walled garden of a beautiful restaurant in Winchester.
  5. Pizza: not something you’d ordinarily expect me to blog about, but then this was no ordinary pizza. When I was 20, I worked in southern Italy for a summer to learn Italian. During that time, I took a daytrip to Naples where I sat alone in a tiny square and ate the thinnest pizza topped with sweet, Mediterranean tomatoes and basil leaves, creamy, crumbly ricotta, and salty, dry prosciutto. To this day, I cannot eat the poor excuses for pizza we have in Northern Europe without feeling the sharp pang of paradise lost…
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