à la table

My homemade mac and cheese. Pad Thai. Spicy tuna rolls. Lemon tarts. I can rhyme off a list of my favourite foods - most people can - but what about truly memorable meals? Those meals that, even years later, are as present in your memory as the taste of salt on your lips, the coolness of wine over your tongue? Those are harder to determine, and yet they're as much sustenance for my soul as this morning's toast was for my growling tummy.

Paris. 1996. My first trip to Europe. Early evening, fall. Café Marly, a very trendy, recently opened spot in the Louvre overlooking the courtyard. I was horrifyingly underdressed, but nonetheless was seated at a lovely table overlooking the iconic pyramid. Fresh buffalo mozzarella and tomato salad. A crisp, cold white wine. And white and dark chocolate pots de crème for dessert. The slight resistance against my spoon before it sank into the creaminess of the custard, the lights on the glass pyramid, the feeling of a day spent surrounded in wonder. Best solo meal I have ever had.

Ontario. More than ten years ago. Visiting someone who'd recently moved away. Took a pizza from his favorite place as a surprise (they partially bake it, you pop it in the oven when you get where you're going). Kissing in the kitchen while the pizza finished cooking. Garlicky, savoury, crusty loveliness. Martinis. Eating on the floor. Perfection.

Tuscany. 2006. A friend and I took cooking classes in a centuries old farmhouse. Drinking carafes of wine made from grapes grown on the property. Our first night, learning to make pasta with four people we'd just met, then sitting down to a wonderful meal with our new friends. Ravioli with butter and sage sauce. Spaghetti with fresh tomato sauce. Turkey breast stuffed with sausage and orange peel. Fried artichokes. Apple cake. Laughter and conversation with people who'd been strangers until the pilot light was lit.

New York. 1992. My first visit to the city. A fancy dinner at the top of the World Trade Center. I remember the gust of wind that came up the elevator shaft, lifting the hem of my coat, as the doors opened at Windows on the World. Eating crème brûlée for the very first time. Happily, and drunkenly, over-tipping our waiter. I'll never forget the view. And on my trips there since, I always remember taking it all in for the first time, when the doors opened on the 107th floor.

Barcelona. 1999. The kaleidoscope landscape of the Park Güell. The visual freneticness of La Sagrada Familia. The second degree sunburn. The erotica museum. Siesta. Gothic quarter restaurant. Lining up to get in when they opened at 8:30. Sitting on the upstairs balcony, sharing a wonderfully rough sangria, paella, café con leche. Looking back, I don't think the food was anything special. But I will always remember the leisurely evening at the end of a wonderful day, spent with great friends in one of the world's great cities, as one of my favourite meals of all time.

New York. Nearly sixteen years after our evening at Windows on the World. Two older and arguably wiser friends. Lower East Side. Very late dinner at the Stanton Social. The energy was contagious, on a warm Friday night at the edge of summer. Sharing plates. Sitting with strangers. French onion soup dumplings. Possibly the best appetizer in the history of appetizers. Would happily eat them every day.

Halifax. September 2008. Lobster. Rolls. Salad. Wine. Things I've had dozens of times. Good friends sitting around an old coffee table in the middle of a living room full of boxes, in my very first house, which had been mine for all of 10 days.

Food, for me, is pleasure, and passion, and purpose. But it hasn't been the food, after all, that had made these meals so special. Though often terrific, the food has been the backdrop. It's been the company, the places, the experiences that have truly fed me. And it's those things, just like the taste of a darkly sweet custard, that I will always savour.