April 2006

“I’d start off with a plate of jabugo ham, super-extra fatty. Then an ovoli-mushroom salad, then some agnolotti stuffed with fonduta with fresh white truffles on top, then roast suckling pig—cooked over wood—and some small porcini mushrooms cooked in the pan drippings under the pig, and a bowl of some stewed fresh cannellini beans on the side. Then I’d have a big chunk of Parmigiano cheese—it’d have to be from a vacche rosse cow. For dessert, I’d do a bottle of dessert wine, a 1995 Recioto di Valpolicella by Romano Dal Forno. It’s made with dried grapes, so it has a lot of sweetness and a lot of alcohol.”

—Peter Pastan, Obelisk

“My last meal would have to be the fried-rockfish sandwich with tartar sauce, cocktail sauce, and those weird crinkle fries you used to get in the school cafeteria, from Courtney’s Restaurant in Wynne, Maryland, with maybe a ten-ounce Budweiser. The sandwich is really good, but the locale and the people are what makes it so important. Obviously this only counts if I am eating it with my wife and daughters and we immediately get on a sailboat from Point Lookout Marina. Oh yeah, and a killer sunset. It’s my dream, right? Otherwise it would have to be a scrapple sandwich.”

—Brendan Cox, Circle Bistro

“Sitting on the beach in Numana, Italy, cracking sea urchins and eating them off the shell like oysters.”

—Fabio Trabocchi, Maestro