Okay, kids, let's play a game.

[mrissa]

So here we are at my favorite restaurant. Yes! It's the Restaurant of Lost Menu Items. All the things from restaurants that have disappeared, or menu items that have fallen off the menus of restaurants that are still around, and try though you might you just can't get them the way they used to do them. No benefactor could get you there by plane or train or bring you back one in a cooler or a special heat-pack or anything, because they just don't have it there any more.

So what are you ordering? What do you miss?

Me, I'm going to have an Italian Veggie Sandwich from the Chestnut Tree Cafe. Sounds simple, right? But the bread was just right. The mix of veggies was just right. The dressing was just right. And I last had one in 1999, and I cannot for the life of me tell you what any of it was separately, so now that I'm much more experienced at making breads and dressings from scratch, I have no idea where to even start making the thing for myself.

How about you?

Comments

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

Beef and cheese enchiladas from Little Tijuana. French meat pies at the MN Renn. Fest. Campbell's chicken with dumpling soup (not the single-serving hearty thing, which is cream based, but the old canned one that is clear broth).

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

That's a hearty meal, there.

[vcmw]

There was a sandwich at the Still Life in Fremont coffeehouse. It was open face and involved fresh figs. They only had it on the menu once. I'd like that.

And there was the one particular falafel cart in New York City not too far from my gram's apartment where they knew my dad and always gave us a little extra tahini sauce and maybe some sweet fried onions and the falafel balls sort of cracked open when you bit them but were soft inside. They're not there anymore and anyway you only got it just right if they'd seen you a lot and made it special. I'd like that too.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I like figs! I did not used to. And now I do. But I have not had a fig sandwich. Maybe I ought to start, since I have not the platonic form to compare it with and will not be disappointed.

I also like dates. I used to think I didn't because date bread was one of the things that one could get by mistake thinking one was going to get banana bread. And I think I maybe still don't like date bread, Ramones aside*, because it's kind of too sweet. But dates themselves, with pecan halves, in the big ol' container from the Persian grocery as part of the ongoing series of Raiding Other People's Cultures For Snacks, those are nice.

*"I wanna piece of date bread." Why, how do you sing that song?

[mirrorthaw.livejournal.com]

Beef stroganoff from the Russia House. Pelmeni from Pelmeni or Arbat. For some strange reason we can't keep any Russian food joints open here.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

We used to have Nina's very very close here, and that was good. Then it became a pool hall. Now it's supposedly Nina's again, but we have to go back and try to make sure. We still have Moscow on the Hill, but given the number of Russians in the area, that seems like not a lot of Russian restaurants. (Given the number of Russian groceries, the clear answer is that our local Russians want to eat something else when they go out to dinner.)

[arkessian.livejournal.com]

The kadhi at Mandeer, in Hanway Place off Tottenham Court Road. Which restaurant is, alas, no more. I once asked them how to make it, and they told me, but I never wrote it down...

[oursin.livejournal.com]

What was that Thai place in Soho we used to go to that had the crab claws with glass noodles? I've never seen those anywhere else.

There are also a lot of things I had in my salad days in restaurants about which I wonder whether a revisitation would be the equivalent of reading a book that the Suck Fairy had got at.

[redbird]

Apple shrimp, from a Chinese restaurant in Brooklyn whose name I have long since forgotten. I'm not sure what went into the recipe besides shrimp and Granny Smith apples (if I had been, I'd probably have reconstructed it, or tried to). At some point the restaurant decided too few people were ordering this dish for it to make sense to stock the apples.

[elisem.livejournal.com]

A Prince Orange from the cappuccino stand out at Festival long ago.
The lobster bisque from the New French Cafe.
A bowl of the fried rice from Fuji International when it used to be on the West Bank over by the U, and that was my big-deal meal out, for which I saved all week.
A palmier from the New French Kitchen for dessert. (Huh, I detect a theme here.)

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

What is a Prince Orange? Google wants to tell me about the Prince of Orange, and him I already know.

[alecaustin.livejournal.com]

I want an order of the Chicken Satay from Cha Am as it was made under the old management, when they didn't put so much sugar in the marinade. Also, bread pudding from the place my folks and I used to go to in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. (Mmm, bread pudding.)

[magentamn.livejournal.com]

The hot fudge cake at the Hot Shoppe in Bethesda Md, when I was a kid. Pound cake, vanilla ice cream, more pound cake, lots of thick hot fudge, and whipped cream. Ella's Deli in Madison, WI has something like it, but not as good, and never enough hot fudge.

And there was a place that had fabulous ice cream drinks in Butler Square in downtown Minneapolis years and years ago. Right now, I really wish I knew where to get good ice cream drinks, the kind with liqueur in them. But not a mudslide, because I don't really like Bailey's.

[katallen.livejournal.com]

Double egg and chips from the Strid Cafe (and for afters a bar of Cadbury's fruit & nut eaten before it melted while turning rocks in the river to catch crayfish)

Oh and those malted chocolate balls M&S sold for a short while and then vanished away from any reality but vague cravings.

[ There was another thing but I realised that it isn't I can't get something approximating it... just that it was a thing which was the best evah when I was a kid but would probably make me feel ill actually eaten now rather than remembered]

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

The burrata sandwich at Clementine. Grilled baguette, sun-dried tomatoes, proscuitto, arugula, olive oil and balsamic dressing, burrata, and an egg fried in olive oil with a soft yolk and crisp-edged whites.

I recreate versions of this for myself sometimes, but they did it really well. I think it might have been too expensive (given the burrata) and so little-ordered to justify keeping the burrata around, as it only keeps for about a day.

[wshaffer.livejournal.com]

There was a short-lived Afghan restaurant on Hearst Ave. in Berkeley that served a side dish of eggplant, tomatoes, and maybe some bell pepper, topped with thick yogurt. I don't even know what it was called, because it was just this thing you got on the side when you ordered other stuff. I've had dishes with eggplant, tomatoes, and peppers at other Afghan restaurants, and they were tasty but different. I've cooked dishes with eggplant, tomatoes, and peppers and they were tasty but different.

I also miss the nopales that Consuelo's at Santana Row dropped off their menu a year or so back. Although I suspect that they wouldn't be hard to recreate once I psych myself up to grapple with a form of produce that requires one to remove its spines before cooking.

[timprov.livejournal.com]

We discovered this year that there's a restaurant near the 4th Street hotel which has a nopales margarita.

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

Calamari and spanakopita from Diogenes while I figure out what else I want.

[pameladean]

I want the ENTIRE vegan brunch from the Mud Pie, complete with the part where people who want regular ordinary everyday things like milk in their coffee have to ask, and vegans never have to ask because it is all vegan.

I also want their fried tempeh sandwich and their tempeh stir-fry. I know that is three meals, but hey.

P.

[lutin.livejournal.com]

I'd like that! And also, all the coconut milk-based ice cream that Maggie Mudd's used to have (especially toasted coconut! and coffee! and pumpkin!). And also, the amazing brownie sundae they would make with vegan whipped cream and chocolate sauce and sprinkles and etc. And an avocado/cheeze dosa from my mom's ashram in the 80's. But only if it came with their special chutney. And only if it could somehow also be vegan.

[oursin.livejournal.com]

There are some things about which I wonder, was it the food itself or was it the setting/ambiance/moment? Like the cooked breakfast on the cross-channel ferry after crossing France by train or the fried herrings on Sandhalm. I think some of the Greek meals would stand up even if not eaten beside the Platy Yialyos [?sp] on Sifnos (we had some amazing meals there though I think I would pass on the retsina).

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I suspect that part of my adoration for the Chestnut Tree of Fabled Memory is that it was the One Good Place in my college town, and I was mostly eating college food. But then my parents were not in that predicament and also found it good, so I know that's not all of my adoration--and I still found it good when I was back on the first day after holidays.

[von-krag.livejournal.com]

I loved walking into Uglesichs on Baronne St in NOLA. I loved being asked "Shrimp po-boy w/a side of dirty rice, Hon?" I do both of those well but there's just something special about a place that's been there since 1924.

[timprov.livejournal.com]

Probably I would ask Julia to cook whatever she wants.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

That seemed to be the wise course when it was there; don't see why it should change now that it isn't.

[rosefox]

Tortellini with meat sauce from the Peacock Caffe on Greenwich Avenue. Or tortellini in brodo. Or an iced chocolate with Arturo's European-style unsweetened chocolate syrup, and my brave face as I declare that I like it that way, and the crunch of the undissolved sugar crystals I dump in when he isn't looking.

I miss that place so much. It was the platonic ideal of a caffe: cavernous and dark; smoky, back when that was legal; open absurdly late; Italian opera always on the stereo; Arturo arguing with Virginia, the one and only waitress, as she stumped around on her enormous orthotic shoes. I wrote Arturo into a story once because it was the only way I had to say goodbye to him--one day he was reassuring me that they were just closing for renovations, and the next day the Peacock was a Japanese restaurant. Broke my heart.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I hate it when they tell us things like that. Sigh.

[atheilen.livejournal.com]

The seafood linguine from the Coffee Garden. Also pretty much all the sandwiches they used to have at the Coffee Garden. The spicy chicken fettucine from Boston Pizza. The spinach nest from the Coffee Garden. Basically everything the Coffee Garden has ever removed from their menu, which considering I've been going there since I was born (my parents met in that hotel, worked there, and were married there) is a lot.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Spinach...nest?

[athenais.livejournal.com]

Three Ingredient Noodles from Chef Chu's. Thin slices of salty ham, cool cucumber and lots of bean sprouts over thick soba noodles with lots of spicy peanut sauce. Oh how I miss it!

[lydy.livejournal.com]

The baked (?) garlic appetizer at TGIFriday's. They served it with really good bread and it was really good. The chicken curry from the Vietnamese place that used to be so close to where I lived, called Matin's. Actually, it was more Thai than Vietnamese, but it was wonderful.

And if I'm not restricted to restaurants, there's the Lobster Newberg my great-aunt made which was better than any other Lobster Newberg anywhere, ever. Always served over mashed potatoes, thank you very much, and never rice.

[brithistorian.livejournal.com]

I'm having the dinner for 2 from Sumi's, a Japanese restaurant in Biloxi, Mississippi, that my family ate at a lot when I was growing up.

- First course: fried dumplings. Some sort of meat-filled triangular fried dumplings that I don't even know the name of to try to order somewhere else.

- Second course: tempura vegetables. A platter full of a variety of different vegetables (I particularly remember the onions and the sweet potatoes) served with a dipping sauce.

- Third course: teriyaki beef with rice. The beef was so tender, and the sauce had the perfect balance of sweet and savory. I've tried making my own, but to no avail.

[davidgoldfarb.livejournal.com]

Meat-filled dumplings at a Japanese restaurant are probably called "gyoza". They come both steamed and fried, so you'll need to specify.

[reveritas.livejournal.com]

Freshly caught, salty, lemony anchovies from Cafe I Don't Remember the Name but would Recognize it in a Second if I Were There in Vernazza, Italy. With the stray cats winding around our legs and the limonata with ice.

[reveritas.livejournal.com]

Monterroso, not Vernazza. I just looked at a map. And limoncello, not Limonata!

[eeyorerin]

I think I shall have a meal of little plates:

The tuna skewers with peanut sauce from the brew pub in the town where I went to grad school. The peanut sauce was dark and rich and spicy and completely unlike any other peanut sauce I have ever tasted.

The curried chicken puffs, salt and pepper prawns, and egg custard tarts from Pacific Moon where my Ohio-partner and I used to go for dim sum. Yes, I can get dim sum other places, but not like that.

For dessert, the chocolate creme caramel from "the Italian place" whose name I never remembered even though I had my post-dissertation dinner there. Ooh, and maybe if I had room during the main course(s), some of their baked goat cheese in tomato sauce with green onions. The cheese was from a local creamery and it was amazing.

[carbonel]

As an appetizer, curried baby squid from the Palace Restaurant that was near the intersection of Highways 12 and 100, before 12 became 394. They served it as a dim sum item, but I discovered that you could order it as a dinner entree as well -- it was one of the mysterious items that was normally available only if you spoke Chinese.

For the main course, a dish called Papao Laiching from the Peking Garden restaurant that used to be at the intersection of Washington and University in Minneapolis. I don't usually like mixed-meat dishes, but this one was just to my taste. It had shrimp and cashews and straw mushrooms and beef or pork, all in a very slightly sweet brown sauce. They took it off the menu at some point, but would still make it for me when I asked for it. And then the restaurant disappeared.

And to go with it, the Monk's Bread that used to be for sale at the Minnesota Renaissance Festival. It actually came from a local monastery, as I understand it, but I have no idea which monastery, and if they still make bread for sale. It was a lovely whole-wheat bread with enough texture to stand up to just about anything you wanted to put on it.

And for dessert, I'll have a couple of loquats. Loquats aren't precisely a lost menu item, but they don't seem to exist in Minneapolis, or indeed in most of the United States. I've only found them in Israel (where I first had them, and where they are called "shesek") and at vegetable stands in London.

[rmnilsson.livejournal.com]

While I don't remember when anyone sold bread at Fest, St. John's Abbey in central MN is famous for its wheat bread, so there's a decent chance it's theirs. I don't know whether you can get it at any stores in the Twin Cities, but they're right off 1-94 and sell it on the abbey grounds if you find yourself driving NW out of the Cities any time soon.

[ellen-fremedon.livejournal.com]

The black raspberry sorbet from the late lamented Great Midwestern Ice Cream in Iowa City.