Banana peel ice-cream
Massimo Bottura
Chef patron, Osteria Francescana, Modena, Italy
The other day I saw one of our chefs, Davide di Fabio, coming back from the market with a box of black bananas. “They were free,” he said, “just sitting next to the trash.” Two days later he called me over to his quiet corner of the kitchen. “Does this remind you of anything?” I glanced at the black banana peel on the white plate and then I touched it. It wasn’t peel but ice-cream moulded into that shape. “Does this remind you of anything?” he asked me again. It took me a minute and then I shouted, “Warhol!” I’d found the original mono version of the Velvet Underground’s first album with Warhol’s name and banana peel on the cover in a used record store in New York. I’d brought it into the kitchen a week ago to show the team. I drew my finger across the plate severing the banana peel diagonally. I closed my eyes. Grilled, blackened banana-peel ice-cream with an intense smoky aftertaste and a creamy texture. I swiped my finger across it again. There was something else in there, too, something chewy and salty. I looked closely at the plate and there it was – seaweed. I couldn’t help but smile. I wasn’t eating discarded banana peels but trash ice-cream. And it was divine.”
Shiso-leaf noodles
Nigella Lawson
Writer, broadcaster, cook
I have to be upfront: I eat so much, choosing one thing is what footballer commentators call a Big Ask. But the most exquisite thing I’ve eaten is shiso- leaf noodles at my favourite restaurant the Shiori in London (it’s a kaiseki restaurant: you don’t order; beautiful morsel after beautiful morsel is brought to you). I now ache to go to Japan.
Live langoustine
Allan Jenkins
Editor, Observer Food Monthly
The most memorable, if perhaps not the best, thing I ate: the live langoustine at Noma this summer. It arrived on ice, twitching. I started wriggling uncomfortably, too. “It’s alive?” I said quietly. “Just nerves,” came the gnomic Nordic reply. Then its legs moved, and its antenna. I tried to pull off its tail. It resisted. I tried to bite and it leapt alarmingly in my mouth. “Please don’t!” it almost whispered. Its tail had been flayed, like in Game of Thrones; it was nearly dead but didn’t know it. I split its delicious skull and sucked it. Death happens. Meat is murder.
Leg of rabbit
Simon Hopkinson
Chef and food writer
A boned leg of rabbit, lightly char-grilled and pressed to the bars to both flatten and tether its shape, then doused with a fruity emollient of tomato, garlic, tarragon and olive oil was, without doubt, the plate of 2014. “Darling, the tomatoes we have just now are insane,” chef Jeremy Lee insisted, when words of praise were lavished upon him as we put our knives and forks together, licked plates removed. “Well,” I said, with eyes a touch moist, “the cooking of the rabbit alone was pretty bonkers, too.” This memorable lunch drew to a close, with chef, on one of the street tables attached to Jeremy’s restaurant, Quo Vadis, Soho. Glasses of ice-cold poire Williams, a couple of coffees and a couple of friendly fags seemed an entirely proper conclusion, all told. We smoked cigarettes, too…
Eucalyptus-smoked lamb
Per-Anders and Lotta Jorgensen
Editors, Fool Magazine
Mugaritz 2014. A meal, at its best, is orchestrated and put together like an album back in the day; a carefully thought-out sequence with some possible singles chart hits. Eucalyptus-smoked loin of lamb with its cultivated fur, black banana with shrimp paste and starched handkerchief of fruit and flowers: soft as silk, freshly ironed, a bit powdery, filled with pressed flowers and herbs, as if was just taken out of a grandmother’s linen drawer.
Guinea fowl
Margot Henderson
Chef, Rochelle Canteen
The sun was shining over Stockwell. It was a crucial moment: everything seemed like an omen. After 20 years living in Soho, we [Margot is married to St John’s Fergus Henderson] were moving south of the river. We went to our new local, the Canton Arms. We sat by the windows, the door open a crack, allowing just enough air into the hectic Sunday scene. Then a beaten-up black Le Creuset arrived: the lid was lifted, steam rising with delicate smells: it was a succulent guinea fowl and barley. I carved the bird. It was well-seasoned, braised to perfection, holding its own, carving nicely, the broth not saying too much, taking on all the flavours around it, the greens textural and nutty. It was a moment that the stars lined up: the food was delicious, we were together – a romantic lunch and a good omen.
Monkfish liver
Jamie Oliver
Cook, restaurateur
I was cooked the most incredible dish by James Lowe at Lyle’s in Shoreditch – monkfish liver with foraged sea greens and burnt butter. It was the sort of dish I never thought I would adore but I really, truly did. My favourite whole meal of this year was by Bruno Loubet at Grain Store. It was simply a veg-tastic greatest hits from one of the greatest chefs in Britain.
Tamales
Chris Ying
Editor-in-chief, Lucky Peach
I’d gotten married five hours earlier. I hadn’t managed to elbow my way through gathered family and friends to the table of salumi and oysters. The smoked brisket we’d served for dinner was just a faint memory. Awash in a swirling pool of love and pride and whiskey and wine, I came upon a desert mirage brought to life. My friend Karen Taylor, chef-proprietor of El Molino Central in Sonoma, California – a true doyenne of masa and a custodian of authentic Mexican cooking – had come bearing pozole and tamales, some filled with chicken mole, others with roasted chillis and cheese. David Chang and Chad Robertson had instinctively switched over from wedding guests to their food-service-professional selves. They ladled crimson-red broth into paper bowls and scattered fresh onions and Mexican oregano over the top. I slurped down the porky manna in between mouthfuls of tamale, and all was right with the world.
Muscat grapes
Skye Gyngell
Head chef, Spring
A little bunch of late harvest Muscat grapes from Asti in Piedmont. It was early October and I ate them in the kitchen – a trusted supplier dropped them in for us to try, and they were so perfectly ripe and intensely sweet that it took me by surprise. They are beautiful at that time of year.
Cod throat
Brad McDonald
Head chef, the Lockhart
Etxebarri in Spain is the restaurant that all chefs make a pilgrimage to at some point. I have a real interest in smoking and cooking with wood – we do a lot of it at the Lockhart – so it had been on my wishlist for years. In May this year, I took a trip to the Basque country with my wife and two small children – we hired a babysitter while my wife and I had lunch. I’d never travelled like that, so it was a real treat. They cook over wood coals in a tiny kitchen with custom-made grills. Everything we had was phenomenal but the dish that blew me away was the cod’s throat. It’s an interesting cut of the fish, essentially the fleshy little triangle under the cod’s chin, and it tasted almost like it had been confited. It was super-tender and gelatinous with a pure, clean flavour of the ocean.
Malfatti and red mullet
Nieves Barragán Mohacho
Head chef, Barrafina
Once a year I meet up with good friends – Mitch Tonks, Fergus Henderson and others – for a long weekend that we call The Truffle Trip. This year we went to La Pineta, by the seaside in Tuscany, and I ate a dish of malfatti with olive oil, red mullet, fresh tomatoes and basil. The flavour of the red mullet – wow.
Ricotta gnocchi
Jay Rayner
Observer restaurant critic
Carmen Quagliata’s ricotta gnocchi at the Union Square Cafe in New York. The recipe is simplicity itself. There’s ricotta, just enough flour to maintain structural integrity and a little seasoning. The result is miraculous and suggests both a steady hand in the kitchen and a keen eye on the roll and tumble of the boiling water they are cooked in. To say they are like edible clouds is to give too much credit to a cloudy day. There is an ethereal lightness to them, offset by a little tomato sauce. Uncomplicated? Certainly. A moment of bliss to eat? Why yes.
Duck
Clare Smyth
Chef patron, Restaurant Gordon Ramsay
My partner and I went skiing in Courchevel and managed to get a table at Le 1947 at Cheval Blanc. That exquisite dining room, immaculately dressed staff and a tasting menu that was phenomenal. I will never forget the duck dish Yannick [chef Yannick Alléno] served. Beforehand he showed me the actual bird. The quality was outstanding: each feather perfect.
Duck fat noodle soup
Jason Atherton
Chef patron, Pollen Street Social, Berners Tavern
Has to be the duck fat noodle soup when I went for dinner at Dabbous with my wife and two daughters. It had such wonderful flavours: homemade soba noodles with duck fat, duck consommé, cabbage and mushrooms. It was the most amazing stock I’ve ever tasted. All the rich flavours married together incredibly well and it was very indulgent – ideal for a winter evening.
Rye sourdough
Trine Hahnemann
Cook, food writer
One of the best bakeries right now is Brød in Copenhagen. They make a rye wheat sourdough that is just really, really good. The crust is really dark and crunchy and the bread is soft inside. When you cut into it you get a beautiful sweet smell with a little bit of sourness to it, not too much. I eat it with cheese and homemade blackcurrant jam.
Ayu (Japanese fish)
James Lowe
Head chef, Lyle’s
I spent the first couple of weeks of the year in Japan, to see what people are eating up in the mountains, where they do a lot of grilling and hotpots. The restaurant that stood out for me was Tokuyama, near Lake Yogo, a couple of hours north east of Kyoto. The dining room sits six or eight people and the guy who runs it catches everything himself. One of my favourite dishes was ayu, a small river fish that had been fermented between kelp and the leaves from sake: it was one of the craziest, most complex things I’ve ever eaten.
Raw beef and mussels
Nuno Mendes
Head chef, Chiltern Firehouse
I’ve had quite a few amazing meals at Lyle’s in Shoreditch, and the one dish I have every time is the raw beef with mussels. Apart from the cooked mussels, the dish is essentially raw. The beef is nicely aged and goes really well with the mussel emulsion, which has a creamy start and a really briny finish. The shavings of fresh leek give it a really nice crunch and a pleasant oniony burst. It’s a stunning dish.
Grouse boudin
Hélène Darroze
Chef-owner, Hélène Darroze at the Connaught
In August, I went to the Clove Club in Shoreditch and had the grouse boudin with ceps and a whisky emulsion Grouse can be very strong and I was worried this dish would be overpowering, but it was well-balanced, well-executed – a beautiful combination.
Ox in coal oil
Mary Ellen McTague
Head chef, Aumbry Restaurant
I had ox in coal oil at Simon Rogan’s The French in Manchester – I was there for lunch, working my way through the tasting menu. It was diced cubes of raw ox that had been reared on a nearby farm, dressed in coal oil. The combination of raw meat and this smoky charcoal flavour was incredible.
Seabass ceviche
Thomasina Miers
Wahaca founder, cookery writer
De Mar a Mar in Mexico City is a seafood restaurant quite close to the Centro Historico. It’s a tiny little place, and from the outside it seems like an oasis in a concrete city. The seabass ceviche was the freshest I’ve ever had and they do the most delicious crab rolls, deep fried and served with a chipotle cream.
Broad been purée
Florence Knight
Head chef, Polpetto
I spent some time in Puglia earlier in the summer and stayed at a beautiful seaside agriturismo on the outskirts of Otranto called Agriturismo Da Marta. The chef is a wonderful cook, well into to her 80s. I loved everything that came out of her kitchen, but one dish that springs to mind is her purè di fave con cicorie – a broad bean purée served with steamed chicory. It was so earthy and so full of flavour.
Sunflower seeds, kornly and pine
Ann Marie Gardner
Founder, Modern Farmer magazine
The sunflower seeds, kornly and pine at Relæ in Copenhagen: nothing about the description of it on the menu interested me in the least. The low bowl arrived looking like a soupy risotto. But the taste was so surprisingly complex and delicious, I almost couldn’t register it. You could feel the crunch of the sunflower seeds melted into the creamy but sharp warm soupy cheese, and the bright green real pine needles threw in a fragrant pop to the mouthful of crunch, cream, sharp, fragrant.
Raw honey
Stephen Harris
Head chef, the Sportsman
I bought some local raw honey in April or May. It was completely untouched – there were bits of bees in it. Literally scraped off the hive. When you’re a chef you try and make delicious food but sometimes nature has made something you couldn’t come near.
Brick chicken
Layo Paskin
Co-owner, the Palomar
In summer I took a trip to the wine region near San Francisco, stopping in Sonoma County at a restaurant called the Glen Ellen Star. It does all its cooking in a wood-fired oven with local produce – I had a great brick chicken with figs and ricotta from a nearby dairy farm. It was a convergence of things, which the best meals so often are, a coming together of the food, the place, the California sunshine. OFM
Empanada
Isaac McHale
Head chef, the Clove Club
I was in Tulum in Mexico in May. I had just proposed to my fiancée, Ellen, and she said yes, so I was on cloud nine all day. We tried to go to a truck stop taco place but it was closed, so the taxi driver took us to his favourite empanada spot instead. The food was delicious, but it wasn’t really about the food – for one day in my life, someone else and something else was far more important.
Foie gras and figs
Simon Rogan
Fera, London/L’Enclume, Cartmel/The French, Manchester
I had a great meal at Hélène Darroze at the Connaught earlier in the year. It was good fun – you make up your own menu using marbles with the name of an ingredient on it. The dish I particularly enjoyed was foie gras with figs and cardamom. Foie gras isn’t something I use in my restaurants, so when I’m going out to a typical fine dining place that has it on the menu, I’ll go for it like a shot.
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