Great restaurant dishes

I was originally going to title this thread "If you decided to open a restaurant, what would be on the dinner menu?", but then started thinking about all the great dishes I've had in various restaurants, so I changed it. Here are some of my favorites over the years. I know there are a few I'm forgetting.
Dungeness crab cakes and alder plank salmon - Anthony's - Gig Harbor, WA
Roasted pepper salad - Fortuna's - Niagara Falls, NY
Cream of tomato soup and grilled swordfish stuffed with blue crab, topped with arugula and caviar - Los Caneros - San Antonio, TX
Osso Bucco - the restaurant in Philly where we had the offline with Paulo
Pan fried lake perch - Half Moon Bay - North Tonawanda, NY (a local bar)
BBQ beef ribs - Doug Nelson's - Beaumont, TX

I'm terrible at remembering best-of food (or wine) from previous years, but the best dish in recent memory was a coddled egg with roasted mushrooms, taleggio fonduta, bitter greens and garlic crostini I had this weekend at Avec in Chicago. Actually, everything in the meal was glorious, but this dish stood out for me because the eggs were so succulent and the mushrooms were so savory, two of my favorite tastes!

I was originally going to title this thread "If you decided to open a restaurant, what would be on the dinner menu?", but then started thinking about all the great dishes I've had in various restaurants, so I changed it. Here are some of my favorites over the years. I know there are a few I'm forgetting.
Dungeness crab cakes and alder plank salmon - Anthony's - Gig Harbor, WA
Roasted pepper salad - Fortuna's - Niagara Falls, NY
Cream of tomato soup and grilled swordfish stuffed with blue crab, topped with arugula and caviar - Los Caneros - San Antonio, TX
Osso Bucco - the restaurant in Philly where we had the offline with Paulo
Pan fried lake perch - Half Moon Bay - North Tonawanda, NY (a local bar)
BBQ beef ribs - Doug Nelson's - Beaumont, TX

Espresso cheesecake--Tastings Restaurant, NYCity, 1982; and, sadly, never again.
An all souffle four-course lunch at Souffle--Paris, France
Tempura oysters at a long-gone oriental restaurant on Fisherman's Wharf--San Francisco
Pizza at Pizza di Napoli--Verona, Italy.

Delmonico steak with Roquefort topping at Spark's Steak House in NYC.

Chicken Pontalba at Brennan's in New Orleans.

Mussels Meniere at J's Oyster House in Portland, ME.

Peking duck at China King (or its previous incarnation, the original King Fung) in Boston.

-Paul W.

Tea-smoked duck at Restaurant Hunan in SF, ca. 1982
Dry-aged steak and miso-glazed black cod at Hawthorne Place in SF, ca. 1993
Rehrücken at Bad Homburg, Germany in 1968
Cassoulet at Masa's in Chicago, 1991
scallop sashimi at Morimoto in Philadelphia, 2002
Mr. Kelly's jerk chicken at Carmen and Family Jamaican BBQ, Berkeley, 1989
Olive-oil poached salmon at Charlie Trotter's, Chicago, 1999
"Sphericated olives" and "shrimp dust" at El Celler de Can Roca, Girona, Spain, 2009
Bocadillo de Jamón Iberico, Barcelona, 2009

Mark Lipton

gnocchetti with sea urchin & crab,. Convivio,NYC 2009
miso black cod, Nobu , NYC, 2000 (I realize a cliche, but it's really good)
eggplant and pepper flan, Agrodolce, Imperia 2007
salt grilled chicken and smoked pork belly Shunju, Tokyo 2005
poulet de bresse, Allard, Paris, 2000, 2007
Arpege egg, nasturium risotto. Manresa, Los Gatos 2005
pork bbq, Allen & Son , Chapel Hill, 1979
smoked mackerel in caper sauce Blue Hill at Stone Barns, Tarrytown, 2003

[Jenise]

Threads like this make me realize that I need to eat out more often.

And my memory doesn't really work on specific dishes, per se, so much as entire meals where from start to finish every single dish is flawless. I can remember pointing to a plate several times in my life and saying "That is one of the best ______ I have ever eaten" and yet I can remember now what I was pointing at. What single dishes do end up in the mental Save file are usually the stuff that surprised me, or were firsts. Therefore, the best restaurant steak in the world isn't worth remembering, but the green pea ravioli at Luminaire (Vancouver, about 7-8 years ago)--a single ravioli, just a garnish--that made me cry because it was so unexpected and so perfect, will never be forgotten. Neither will: a slice of foie gras terrine at Laurent in Paris, a plate of chicken ravioli in a chicken hazelnut sauce somewhere on Melrose Avenue, the exquisitely briny linguine vongole with homemade pasta I ordered in a little Roman trattoria once upon a time, a whole steamed lobster removed from it's shell and reassembled on a bed of green lentils at Postrio in San Francisco, the shrimp and grits with fried green tomato at Magnolia in Charleston, a smoked gouda and asparagus risotto at whatever restaurant was atop the Omni in Chicago circa 1988, and just about every plate of hamachi sashimi I've ever eaten.

I'm way off on this one....I thought it was about tableware.
I rarely eat out and am probably overly concerned about how the food will look on the plate

So many! Not even sure where to start. Here are a few that leap to mind:
-- One of the first times my parents took me out with them to a restaurant. It was an old-fashioned red sauce Italian place but I remember ordering pasta with a very strong sauce (either puttanesca or livornese) and it made me pay attention to what I put in my mouth.
-- Hen of the Woods mushrooms at Campagna (NYC)
-- a little restaurant in Rome that served spaghetti con vongole using the local clams (each about the size of nickel), which was a lot of work but a lot of flavor
-- kaiseki in two restaurants in Kyoto
-- roasted chestnuts in the streets of Milan
-- roast goose at Yung Kee (Hong Kong)
-- cullen skink at The Waverly (Kyle of Lochalsh, Scotland)
-- a Portuguese stew of pork and clams at F-Bar (Montreal)

Also, a lot of restaurant experiences that were memorable without a knockout dish.

-- roasted chestnuts in the streets of Milan

Jeff:

This got my attention, reminding me of wonderful roasted beets and/or corn served by street vendors in Tehran; oysters with Chablis at a street vendor in Paris; chocolate candies cooked up by a street vendor in Munich; all circa 1973-75.

Sure, these aren't restaurant dishes...but memorable nonetheless.

So many! Not even sure where to start. Here are a few that leap to mind:
-- One of the first times my parents took me out with them to a restaurant. It was an old-fashioned red sauce Italian place but I remember ordering pasta with a very strong sauce (either puttanesca or livornese) and it made me pay attention to what I put in my mouth.
-- Hen of the Woods mushrooms at Campagna (NYC)
-- a little restaurant in Rome that served spaghetti con vongole using the local clams (each about the size of nickel), which was a lot of work but a lot of flavor
-- kaiseki in two restaurants in Kyoto
-- roasted chestnuts in the streets of Milan
-- roast goose at Yung Kee (Hong Kong)
-- cullen skink at The Waverly (Kyle of Lochalsh, Scotland)
-- a Portuguese stew of pork and clams at F-Bar (Montreal)

Also, a lot of restaurant experiences that were memorable without a knockout dish.

I'm more apt to remember a complete meal and evening than a specific dish but I do remember the roast goose at Yung Kee in Hong Kong four or five years ago. In fact my wife and I enjoyed it so much we ordered another helping to split between us even though the waiter looked at us a little strangely.