How to choose your last meal

David J Constable shares a personal journey of culinary preferences, ranking cuisines from southwestern France, northern Italy to Thailand, highlighting the cultural significance and emotional connections to food

I always dodge the last-meal question because I think it’s in bad taste. It’s one of those things like, “Who are your celebrity crushes?” You have all the anxiety of the choice but none of the pleasure of the execution. You’ll never get a date with Meghan Fox, and your last meal will probably be an uneaten cheese sandwich.

More interesting is the question: “Which food would you choose for the rest of your life?” You must re-evaluate many meals across different cultures, countries and national cuisines. Now, that is far more interesting.

The question forces you to think and be specific, and you can’t select your childhood food or round up any old national cuisine. Meaning that you can’t just say Italian or Indian food because everybody loves Italian and Indian, and there really isn’t such a thing as Italian or Indian food, anyway – you have to specify a dish or a region.

I’ve thought about this a lot. In fact, when sitting in airports, attending important editorial meetings, and giving team presentations, I think of little else. And I’ve got it down to three cuisines – for now.

When considering a cuisine for life, you have to start with breakfast. After all, your home style is the most difficult thing to give up. We all eat out in this city, experimenting across cuisines and price points, but then, we all feel most comfortable at home, whether we’re eating last night’s cold pad Thai or Pringles straight from the tub.

Personally, I like a bowl of mango sorbet before bed, and nothing beats a crispy jacket potato with grated Parmesan and lashings of full-fat butter. Actually, if you’re going to have an ideal ingredient retirement, it would probably involve the potato – its cooking versatility and many incarnations. For national cuisines: England for breakfast, northern Italy for lunch and then alternately southwest France and southern Thailand for dinner.

Yep, I think I’ll stick with that. I’m not an addled, premeditated murderer on death row, so I have options. Interestingly, reading through the last-meal requests from death row is one of the most gastronomically and socially depressing things you can do. AA Gill once covered the subject and discovered yards of enchiladas, stacks of well-done steaks, and buckets of fried chicken. “Swimming pools of ice cream, root beer, Coca-Cola and fruit juice”, he observed, “Tenements of pies and peach cobblers and vast ranges of chocolate cake…” These meals are small windows into the lives that lead to their consumption.

So, back to my three cuisines for the rest of my life.

In third place is the food of south-western France – luscious, silky foie gras pâté and a cast-iron Le Creuset filled with bubbling cassoulet, featuring a variety of duck, figs, and stinky Roquefort. People here eat more saturated fat than anyone else on Earth. This is the food of old Gascony, of authentic peasant France, of excitable, boisterous dining tables followed by long afternoon naps. It is sweet farçous, Toulouse sausage and regional cèpes and truffles. I could live with that.

Second is the food of Piedmont, northern Italy, where they grow rice, make risotto, collect truffles and cook with butter, lard and the olive oil of Genoa. I lived here for a time and return whenever possible. I also enjoy the ham, the cheese and the wines from Barolo and Barbaresco, which are made from the juicy Nebbiolo grape. This is the origin of the Slow Food movement, which evolved into a slow-city movement and now encompasses a slow university, which is my area of academic study. Going back to northern Italian ham and cheese, I’d have to stretch it to Parma and Modena, too, the homes of Parmigiano Reggiano, the best prosciutto, tortellini and balsamic vinegar.

In first place is Thailand. I lived in Bangkok and miss the street food enormously, an ideal combination of delicacy and quick, on-the-go sustenance. It boasts a boundless variety of flavours and textures without being irredeemably precious, although they take pride in their national cuisine and street food traditions.

The food of Bangkok is disorderly and chaotic but assertive. It has tiny little finger food and big, bubbling vats of fish frying. There’s rice and noodles and decisions to be made between green and red curries, salads and stir-fries, holy basil, chilli and garlic. Thai food spans the flavour spectrum, a kaleidoscopic array of colours and intense heat. The smell of charcoal fires and police sirens shrilling, horns tooting and locals wailing. The sweet, the sour, the knee-trembling heats. Oh, and the crabs! Sweet, sweet crabs. The heft of the prawns in a spicy-garlicky sauce. A green papaya salad. A thick, velvety peanut sauce. Mango sticky rice. There’s really no place like it.