Some meals stay with you long after the bill has arrived, and only a handful of them will leave an indelible impression. They usually aren't the ones in the 4-star restaurants with the paycheck price tag. More often a memorable meal comes down to the food you yearned for at that point in time and how the dish satisfied an "inner craving".

We all have our own favorites -- I can still remember the comforting feeling of a roast beef dinner with mashed potatoes in a pool of gravy after an afternoon of pond hockey back in New England, and the tasty crunch of fried clams with tartar sauce at a seaside shack on a familiar drive many summers ago. Or the first time I had Veal Picatta with something called "lemon caper butter sauce" and discovering there was more to Italian than spaghetti & meatballs with "gravy". -- Matt McNally and Laurel Timms