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Right now, I'd have to go with Lure Fishbar -- incredible oysters, delicious chicken 'lollipops,' great burger, fantastic uni...cocktails aren't bad either.

Oh, and some cheeses from Murray's, herring in cream sauce from R&D, Gray's, ...

There were 4 seats left when I clicked, for the 6:30 seating -- so, 2 left!

Poached eggs on sautéed spinach, lox, english muffin. With lots of coffee and a tall glass of grapefruit juice.

Bagels.

(Nice Presidents reference!)

Avocado with a little soy, a squeeze of lime, and a fork.

I have told this story many times:

A few years ago, for Valentine's Day, I wanted to bake a pound cake for my SO (his favorite). Luckily, I decided to do a few test runs, in the hope that I'd tweak a few recipes into My Perfect Pound Cake. The makings of the first cake smelled great, was a beautiful creamy yellow color, and snuggled into the loaf pan just so. Since the recipe specified a 45-minute baking time, I shut the oven door and went into my room to do some work. 30 minutes later, I decided to get a glass of water -- and check on the cake, just in case.

Thin wisps of black smoke were curling out of the oven.

Now, keep in mind that in those days, I was still living in the student apartments in college, which were well equipped with many, many smoke detectors, fire alarms, and sprinklers. Last time a sprinkler had gone off in the building, that entire apartment had been covered in two inches of water -- and the apartment below suffered some damage as well. It was spring semester, senior year. I was not going to let this happen. So, I ran around the floor like a lunatic, collecting fans and shuttling them back to the room, opening all the windows I could find, doing anything possible to filter out the smoke. A few hours later, crisis averted, I passed out (it was 3 a.m. by then -- I keep fairly weird hours) and had completely forgotten that the 'cake' was still in the oven.

The next afternoon, I walked into the kitchen and cracked open the door to take a peek. Molten cake...everywhere. All over the oven walls, along the racks, everywhere. The cake had imploded. Burnt butter and sugar smells invaded the kitchen. I quickly shut the door again.

It took me three days to finally get it together and clean out that oven, and it took forever. Needless to say, I decided on a different Valentine's Day present.

That all said, I wish you the very best of luck. You are much braver than I am, and I'm sure I'm among many who look forward to your posts!

The first one I ever made -- nothing special, just 80/20 med-rare, but I was amazed it came out perfectly to temp AND well-seasoned. Ate it with sliced avocado, a squeeze of lime, dijon, lettuce, tomato.

Alfajores. If that doesn't count (and I've eaten these in numbers embarrassing enough to count as a meal), chimichurri steak or a solid rendition of rice and beans.

Most recently, doner kebaps in Berlin -- but overall, the squid and fish balls on skewers in Hong Kong, dipped into vats of chili oil, that you'd eat a little hunched over to prevent bright orange oil stains on your clothes.

Most memorable would be all the commotion surrounding Chinese New Year dinner -- for all the courses involved my mom and I would have to trek over to Chinatown, usually in the February/March months when all the snow semi-melted to a messy, dirty slush, and drag home endless bags of groceries. Then we'd realize that we'd forgotten the oranges, or the candy for passing around to visiting relatives, or the shrimp crackers for frying...and make a second trek, with me complaining all the while and mom buying a milk tea for the ride home. And the hours of cooking that mom would do in the kitchen, soup simmering, chicken boiling, the wok getting its biggest workout of the year. Sitting down to a table almost sagging with the weight of all the food, a little bit later at night than we'd be used to, we'd eat for hours until we couldn't move. The next day, we'd pile into the car and visit my dad's parents, where all the other relatives would gather, and collect red envelopes.

But there's also the first time I tasted my best friend's mom's matzohball soup, making lasagna with my mom (a true act of love; she never really figured out how to cook pasta properly and thought Italian food was the closest thing to American), all the times dad and I would roll into Wendy's for a classic double with cheese, biggie fries and a frosty...and really any time I experienced a new cuisine.

Love white pepper, black pepper, dried red pepper flakes, dash of cayenne, ground ginger