Food, glorious food…you know how much I love it. But my favourite meals haven’t just featured delicious dishes, rather they are a multi-sensory experience.
Enjoying a meal, especially while travelling is something so incredibly special and when you revisit your photographs, you evoke all sorts of wonderful memories. The best meals I’ve ever had haven’t just been about the food, it’s been the whole experience.
In Chiang Rai, we dined in an elephant camp…
We fed the elephants with sugar cane before sitting down to dinner. Every sense was evoked, the sight of the elephants, the sound of the Thai Kim being played, the smell of the fire, and the taste of wonderfully fresh fish smoked on the barbecue.
In Chiang Mai, we dined in the middle of a rice field, with a stunning view of the paddies all lit up at night, afterwards we set a lantern down the lake and made a wish.
In Tahiti, we had our own private Island and we were serenaded by a Polynesian band and dancers.
But the best meal I ever had while travelling was in Sydney. Mr Silver and I took a seaplane to Jonah’s on Whale Beach for lunch and an overnight stay on Boxing Day. After our meal we were led out to a terrace on a cliff top and Mr S had written a letter inside my dessert menu, after I read it he proposed to me. That’s one moment I’ll never forget.
So as you can see, having a meal is just about getting nourishment, it’s about creating memories that will last forever.
When Celebrity Cruises (I also received a nomination from my fellow luxury lifestyle blogger, Zoe from Love and Limoncello) asked me what starter, main course and dessert got my tastebuds tingling for travel, I thought back to some of the incredible meals I’d had whilst on the road and the perfect memories that they evoked.
Starter
Starting with a taste of Tahiti! Poisson Cru is a signature dish in Bora Bora, the beautiful island where Mr S and I travelled for our honeymoon.
The dish is a like a ceviche of raw tuna marinated in lime and mixed with coconut juice and raw vegetables. I love raw fish and everything about this dish evokes memories of our wonderful time in Bora Bora, the fresh taste of the tuna makes me think of the hot sun on my skin, the beauty of the sea and sweet scent of vanilla that floats through the breeze in Bora Bora.
Main
Lobster and chilli linguine takes me back to our little minimoon in Florence.
Though I love Michelin star restaurants, sometimes the best places are the hidden gems. After a morning tour around the main sights in Florence, Mr Silver and I pop in to little trattoria down a narrow street. With rustic wooden chairs, tiled floors, wine piled high and dribbly candles, it was an authentic feel of Italy. With only few items on the menu the waiter recommended the linguine. It was the most perfect fresh pasta I ever had with totally gorgeous hunks of lobster enhancing it.
Memories of the pasta, not only remind me of the trattoria, but the magnificent Renaissance architecture that we saw and the sounds of beautiful Italian accents.
Most importantly it was the feeling of just being married and sharing a plate of linguine with the person I was going to spend the rest of my life with. I’ll return to Florence again and again to eat marvellous pasta and remember that feeling of being a newly wed.
Dessert
Two years ago Mr Silver and I decided to go travelling around Australia, it was probably the best thing I ever did in my life and the holiday of a lifetime. By the end of the holiday we were engaged and starting to imagine a wonderful wedding that would mark the beginning of a lifetime together. But I’m not going to write about that dessert on the day he proposed, to be honest in my excitement I can barely even remember it.
Mr Silver and I started our Australian adventure in Melbourne, and it was here that I ate the best meal I ever had.
The restaurant was called Vue de Monde, and it had a gorgeous view over the city of Melbourne.
After seven magnificent courses of the most wonderfully inventive food, we reached the dessert.
The most perfectly cooked chocolate souffle of all time.
Take me back to Melbourne and the bustling streets, the scent of coffee, the rush of driving along the Great Ocean Road, the dream of seeing koala bears in the wild and that intense feeling of excitement about being on the other side of the world.
Drink
And what drink would I wash it all down with? Well champagne, of course.
‘I drink it when I’m happy and when I’m sad. Sometimes I drink it when I’m alone. When I have company I consider it obligatory. I trifle with it if I’m not hungry and drink it when I am. Otherwise, I never touch it – unless I’m thirsty’
So there you have it, there’s more to food than just taste…it’s about creating memories through multi-sensory experiences and living out dreams with the person that you love.
This post has been written as part of a competition by Celebrity Cruises with the potential to win a seven night cruise, if you want to get involved tweet @CelebrityUK with the hash tag #TasteofTravel. Blog entries will be accepted up to the 12th of January, to find out more view the competition page here.
For the final part of this post I’ve been asked to nominate four other travel bloggers to write a similar post; I choose Suze from Luxury Columnist, Ashleigh from Quintessentially Me and Miho from Wander to Wonder and Amanda from Rhyme and Ribbons.
