Last meal before execution

Maybe this is a topic that's appeared on this site before. But I haven't seen it.

Let's say you face the executioner in six hours and have one last meal to eat. You can choose from any restaurant in the country and any menu item.

I'm not completely sure, but I think my choice would probably be the Kalamata style chicken from Athenian Room on Webster Street in Chicago. It's the kind of chicken that's so good, you eat the bones. It's drenched in a lemony, vinegar type of marinade, and underneath the half chicken in every order are crunchy cottage fries that soak up all the vinegary juices. I've been going to this place for 22 years and have ordered this item every time, and it's never disappointed. (They have good gyros, too, but who can pass up that chicken? I think half the patrons in the place are usually eating it).

Why this place hasn't made it to the Sterns' list of recommendations for Illinois is a mystery, though I dare say if Athenian Room were in Connecticut they'd be singing its praises (I think even the Hartford KFC is on the list of their recommendations for that state).

But I digress. Anyone else want to chip in?

Actually, this has come up twice before--but always a good one to keep going. Here are the links to the previous threads:
http://www.roadfood.com/Forums/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=757
http://www.roadfood.com/Forums/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=1588

Well, guess I wasn't very original there. Oh well. I knew it was too good an idea to not have already appeared here.

I am going to inject a bit of context in here. Actually assuming I was on death row instead of comfortably ensconced in workplace office land, I would want my mother to prepare something from her repetoire.

I would want my mother's pot roast with a side of her latkes. These simple dishes have never been as good anywhere else in my opinion. And I have replicated these dishes with the same ingredients and my mother watching over me to no avail.

That would give me the measure of comfort I need to move on to the next world, whatever it may be.

I would ask for dodo bird. Roasted dodo bird. And a stay until they could prepare it for me.

quote:

Originally posted by Bill B.

I would ask for dodo bird. Roasted dodo bird. And a stay until they could prepare it for me.

Good answer. I was also thinking along those lines: a typical meal in the Flinstone household. Especially bronto burgers.

mmmm... Fried Dodo...

Doesn't dodo just taste like chicken?

I've never understood the last meal thing. I'd want something I hate--something to make me want to die . . . maybe haggis.

Ugh. Or a sackful of undistinguishable offal from Taco Hell.

Do they really serve you whatever you want? Would they serve Martha Stewart some foie gras and a crispy duck stuffed with morels?

I'm gonna feel like Mary Poppins ending the tea party on the ceiling by saying "It's time to go home," but it's my understanding these last meals are always what the prison kitchen can prepare.

Now, to get the ball rolling again, how about what your last dinner on the "Titanic" would have been? A bit more to choose from there, but, for that matter I have a menu from The French Line's "Liberté" that would whisk you off to heaven before you're offed by the State.

I was in Mannheim, Germany recently and the Modern Art Museum had a very powerful mural size piece which consisted of a listing of the various meals that were ordered by different death row inmates for their last meals; most of these meals were 'roadfood' favorites such as fried chicken, cheeseburgers, steak, etc although a couple of requests were for more elaborate meals. Some of the requests were turned down and the mural listed what the inmate got instead and also whether they ate the meal. It was very powerful and very disturbing.

quote:

Originally posted by michaelgemmell


Now, to get the ball rolling again, how about what your last dinner on the "Titanic" would have been? A bit more to choose from there, but, for that matter I have a menu from The French Line's "Liberté" that would whisk you off to heaven before you're offed by the State.

Michael: Have you seen this old thread http://roadfood.com/Forums/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=2278&SearchTerms=titanic,meal,last

quote:

Originally posted by michaelgemmell

I'm gonna feel like Mary Poppins ending the tea party on the ceiling by saying "It's time to go home," but it's my understanding these last meals are always what the prison kitchen can prepare.

Now, to get the ball rolling again, how about what your last dinner on the "Titanic" would have been? A bit more to choose from there, but, for that matter I have a menu from The French Line's "Liberté" that would whisk you off to heaven before you're offed by the State.

Did you see the episode of "Antiques Roadshow" where somebody brought in a fleemarket painting of the Titanic and on the back side was an original dinner menu from the last night before it sank? Now if we had THAT, we'd know the choices.

PS--I'm a Titanic fan--I've got all three American movies about the sinking but not yet the one filmed in Germany and banned by the Nazi's as too pro-British.

quote:

Originally posted by Grampy

quote:

Originally posted by michaelgemmell


Now, to get the ball rolling again, how about what your last dinner on the "Titanic" would have been? A bit more to choose from there, but, for that matter I have a menu from The French Line's "Liberté" that would whisk you off to heaven before you're offed by the State.

Michael: Have you seen this old thread http://roadfood.com/Forums/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=2278&SearchTerms=titanic,meal,last

Aha! So we DO know the choices.

I'll have oysters, cream of barley soup, salmon, chicken Lyonnaise, sirloin, romaine, squab, asparagus, pate and eclairs thank you.

quote:

Originally posted by Bill B.

I would ask for dodo bird. Roasted dodo bird. And a stay until they could prepare it for me.

Bill,
Let me refer you to Howard Waldrop's award-winning short story, "The Ugly Chickens." Seems the Gudger family out from Water Valley might could help you achieve this, especially if you have a time machine you can set for 1927. As my father's late Cousin Jack would say, "Boy howdy, you'd be a-eatin' awhile."
Ornithoillogically, Ort. Carlton in Dodo-Free Athens, Georgia.

Dearfolk,
Now for my serious response. I'd have my mother summoned forth in a seance to tell someone exactly how to make her amazing macaroni & cheese. Then I'd have the cook prepare an entire Pyrex dish of it, and I'd slowly, tenderly eat the whole thing. I would then me ready for whatever fate befell me.
For those of you who wonder what made it so special, she used nothing but the utterly "stinkiest" old cheese she could find (Cabot's really old variety will do just fine), Creamettes elbows (the smaller variety), a significant amount of real butter, whole milk, and an enthusiastic double dash of Lea & Perrins Worcestershire sauce.
In an earlier version of this, I may have mentioned something else, but I can't recall it tonight. This recipe will have to do for the moment.
Unhungrily, Ort. Carlton in 30601-land.

I would opt for a bottle of really good champagne, some great pate and crackers and 30 sleeping pills

Did anyone ever see the website the state of TX had up, for quite a long time, that listed the last meal requests of their inmates on death row?

Gruesome idea, but I read it avidly. Most people were pigging out on regular roadfood. I believe it was taken down in being questionable 'taste (I guess double entendre meant there).

Am I the only ghoul who ever read it?

I remember that site - I was n it a few years ago and was fascinated by the whole thing. Sort of twisted, i know.

I would eat something high in fat and something high in carbs-anything that wouldn't be good for me-because if it was going to kill me-I would be dying anyway.

Upon reflection, I think I'd forgo food and ask for a bottle of champagne and a smart, sexy, redheaded woman. With any luck, she would leave the hangman with nothing to kill but but a smiling, bumblestruck idiot.

Does that sound too much like a singles ad?

a coupla cheeseburgers fries and a coke.

FiletMignon and a variety of shellfish.

Half a slab of the dry from the Rendezvous, a couple chicken legs from Sweet Pea's (Ruston, LA's best fried chicken), a few pints of Guinness, and some Valium.