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Should the focus be on the actual food, or on the occaison?....Because for me some of my most memorable meals would not be the best food I've had, but the setting, the company etc, etc

Good one!

- Under a moonlit sky by Lake Victoria, Tanzania. - eating chapattis; charred-crisp and finger-tingling hot, tasting deliciously smoky from the fire; Then githeri, a steaming stew of beans and potato; followed by ugali, a filling corn dish and kuku paka, a delicious spicy chicken and coconut dish.

- Coffee and cakes high above Lake Louise in Canada. There's no road up to the little shack and the non-perishables are dropped off at the beginning of the session by helicopter. Everything else needs to be taken by foot up a very steep mountainside. Moreover, there's no electricity and everything is baked on a wood stove. Yet they were some of the best cakes I've ever had.

Tomato soup on the Isle of Skye

Fish sandwiches by Galata Bridge, Istanbul.

Raclette up a mountain in Switzerland (and walking back down the mountain in the dark afterwards on a very full belly)

Breakfasts with friends in Switzerland, Germany and Austria. They.are.unbelievable.

Cavier in a youth hostel in Norway!

There are so many occasions - but I'd better stop!

Hi Mattyboy, I was thinking a combination of food and location, not necessarily haute cuisine, just a meal you can't forget for whatever reason, be it setting, company, hunger or anything else.

I got myself lost in one of Mumbai's bigger markets a few years ago. I was hot, sweaty, hungry and temporarily misplaced. I just checked the price on a blackboard on an eatery that said "veg" on it, and walked in.

I've had a few thalis, but not like this.

First a waiter brings warm water in a large ornate copper ewer, which one uses to wash one's hands.

A waiter brings a selection of starters.

Several waiters serve you a selection of main course dishes (sabji waiter, bread waiter, rice waiter, dal waiter, accompaniments waiter, water waiter (one is shown the bottle is still sealed)). The manager seemed to have some sort of system of calling each waiter depending on how many fingers he held up, so as soon as one dish was empty the appropriate waiter would appear.

Dessert waiter.

Now, this was not second-rate food. This was very good food.

Then the warm-water waiter appears again, and one washes one's hands again.

All in, I think it was around Rs300 (under GB£4) including tips.

I could probably never find the place again if I tried, but Gods it was good!

The most memorable meal for me was in the village of near the end of the Annapurna circuit trek in Nepal, this is probably not a story suitable for vegetarians or small children!
 
We had been eating Daal Bhaat for around 15 days straight, every lunch, every dinner, the same damn green slimy dish. We were two rapacious carnivore kiwis desperate for some meat, something bloody, anything but more bloody lentils!
 
As chance happened on that day approaching the village, after a long days trekking, we stumbled past a shepherd watching his flock…I looked at my friend and we both instantly knew what we would do…we would purchase a sheep! In fact…it could have been a goat…but whatever it was…it had legs and was edible!
 
We made the transaction and led the poor thing bleeting into the village in search of a lamb balti. As we walked through we passed some other trekkers at a guest house, new age, vegetarian crusties, smoking a chillum and picking bugs out of their dreads….they asked what the sheep was for. We salivated back….”dinner”. They weren’t impressed,  in fact, they were quite horrified…we walked on.
 
We both realised however that there was no way either of us were going to butcher this poor creature…we would have to pay someone else to do it, so we found another less crustie infested guesthouse and set about negotiating them to prepare a banquet for us. The plan grew and grew and soon we had ordered along with our lamb, vegetable curries, rice, chapattis, beer and that particularly foul Nepali whisky to accompany the meal. We would then walk around the village and see who was interested in joining our feast. We would organise a dinner party in the Himalayas!
 
 The news of the party had obviously spread around the village because upon entering another guest house, I walked into a hushed conversation about some New Zealanders who were intent on murdering some poor little sheep, I decided to walk on.

What followed however was one of the most wonderful nights of my life, we ended up having twelve different nationalities joining our dinner party. Everyone feasted like it was their last meal, the chef did a great job and there was more than enough delicious food for everyone. With an open fire, outside table with magnificent views, the music, dancing, singing and laughing went long into the night. The opportunities that travel seems to provide like this, chances to create impromptu occasions, which has led to some of my most treasured memories is really what keeps me passionate about travel.

I’ve never eaten Daal Bhaat since!

I returned to Puno, Peru after an eleven year absence with three friends in tow, and happened across a Nuevo-Andean restaurant. Things were definitely a bit more fancy than before, I thought. Then one friend got ill with altitude sickness but later the rest of us went for dinner. The food was delicious, but we were surprised to find that the man who ran it hailed from Croydon. He sorted us out some chicken soup to go for the invalid, refused all payment and then cracked open a bottle of top quality pisco. My friend downed hers like a shot of cheap tequila. I don't know who was more mortified... No idea whether it's still there but look forward to going again one day to find out.

There are many to choose from.

Of most recent memory, lunch courtesy of Dario Cecchini in Pazano was a truly memorable occasion which I have documented elsewhere; he said plugging one of his own Experiences - http://www.wanderlust.co.uk/mywanderlust/members/nick78/experiences/the-butcher-of-panzano_5247

Sticking with Italy, there's Osteria Chinhale Bianco (not sure about the spelling but it translates as 'house of the white boar') in Florence - it's a wonderful restaurant about a hundred yards from the Ponte Vecchio. No-one I have spoken to who has been there (mostly on my wife's recommendation it has to be said) has ever had a bad meal there.

A few from my earlier travels linger in the memory - although perhaps more for the place/occasion than the food:

Chicken spit-roasted over an open fire in the middle of a campsite in Germany.

Eating fish on a boat in the Black Sea that my scuba-diving instructor had caught with a harpoon-gun about half an hour beforehand.

Nyama choma served with nshima and washed down with Tusker beer in a bar in Nanyuki, Kenya.

A bar in Mbabane (Swaziland) which had a self-service barbecue out back - customers bought meat from the butcher's next door.

'Bring and braai' nights in various South African hostels - a great way to get to know fellow-backpackers.


Stodgy Czech pub grub in Prague.

The tastiest was in a restaurant on Circular Quay in Sydney. We had climbed the Harbour Bridge in the morning (which was amazing), and treated ourselves to lunch at a very nice sea-food restaurant. The weather was lovely and we sat outside looking out over the beautiful harbour and the Opera House. We had the biggest platter of fish and shellfish you could possibly imagine, and it was totally gorgeous.

A very different meal a couple of days later came a very close second - grilled baramundi and chips from a take-away in Manly. It was wonderful, so tasty - I would have been more than happy if I'd been served it in a restauarant, but this was from a chippy!

Slightly stranger was a meal we had on the tall ship we had sailed to the Antarctic on. At the most southerly point (not far north of the Antarctic circle), they fired up a barbecue out on the deck of the ship - amongst more conventional barbecue-food, there was some meat they had picked up on the route south, in South Africa. So with icebergs, penguins and seals in view, we were eating ostrich and kudu!

But the weirdest of all was in Vietnam. (Those of a nervous disposition may prefer to stop reading now!) We had already tried frog (which turned out to contain the whole body of the frog, cut into chunks, including the head!) and enjoyed it. So my friend and I mentioned to our guide that we would like to try dog, and he very kindly took us to a restaurant that served it. It looked like your typical Vietnamese cafe - plastic tables, plastic infant school chairs, a scattering of waste food on the floor. We had thought we would just try one dish between us, in case we didn't like it. But before we knew it, we were surrounded by a feast of dog cooked in every possible way you can imagine - roast, stewed, stir-fry, barbecue. There was even black pudding and intestines! And the verdict - most of it was really nice, especially the black pudding, but the intestines were a bit chewy! Certainly an experience not to be forgotten!

Whole boiled puffins in the Faroe Islands - very tasty.
Less tasty was the great big lump of nondescript meat (still on the bone) that sat in the middle of my plate one mealtime in a state-run cafe in the old Soviet Union. It was so tough I eventually gave up trying to get any meat off it at all - even after using hands and teeth.

Oh, Mongolian barbeque (NOT the wierd, chinesified, indoors thing you
find in the West) - Watch sheep slaughtered and cut up in less than 10
minutes, then layed with hot rocks out of a fire, potatoes, carrots and a
bit of water in a milk churn, then left for an hour or so. The meat
came out absolutely beautiful. Slightly smokey, succulent, beautiful.
And the setting - the side of a river in Mongolia, with no towns or
buildings in sight.



Ceviche in Lima was absolutely wonderful, on a hot sunny day. A huge
plate of mixed fish with bright red chillies and lime juice, not
sloppy, with sweet potato ans corn, with a jug full of chicha morada.
Sadly I can't remember the name of the place, but it was decorated all
in blue and white, and had a covered courtyard at the back with the wall
removed. I don't normally heat hot food at all, but I ate the whole,
heaped plate it was so good.



In agreement with Nick, bring-and-braai in South Africa, in my case with
family: boerewors, beef, ribs, chicken ('the vegetable' according to my
relatives!), sweet potato over the fire with lots of butter and black
pepper, and salad if you think it neccessary. Most memorably on
Christmas Day, in 48'C heat in Kimberley, with about 40 of us round the
'table'.

I once ordered "Sheeps Head" on a menu in a place in Amman, more out of curiosity than a burning desire to eat sheep head. It came on a plate complete with eyes and teeth, but I kind of felt I'd made my bed so had a decent stab at getting through it.
Eating outdoors always makes a meal more memorable for me. A peanut butter sandwich, a slab of biltong and an apple on top of Ndlovini in the Drakensberg with not a soul in sight or a whisper of sound always lives well in the memory.
The opportunity to continue to eat the Ulster Fry at the Ballyrobin Inn near Belfast Int airport was one of the main reasons I decided to marry a Northern Irish girl.
Once whilst staying with friends in Tuscany we were taken to a very scruffy canteen style place where a parish lunch was taking place. Our friend asked of the wild boar menu was being served, it was and we sat down to five courses of wild boar cooked different ways with a bottle of home made rough red wine, that was truly memorable!
There are many more, the Mexican breakfast hangover cure at Uni of Maryland, green papaya salad in a Thai National Park, fish and chips from The Blue Dolphin in Hastings, boerwors braais......mmmmm, I'll stop now as I am drooling!

You decide to marry a Northern Irish girl on the back of a fry? ;-)