A new year. New possibilities. New foods waiting to be eaten. As I look forward to another year of eating and cooking, I also have nostalgia for treats from my New England childhood: affordable wholegrain breads–the kind that are heavy in your hand and densely chewy, an overflowing Philly-style steak and cheese made with U.S.D.A. beef (confound that exasperating ban on U.S. beef ...), or thick, stick-to-the-spoon New England clam chowder, crammed with fresh clams (why are chowders so watery and bland here? My only option is to make my own).

Taste is our most evocative sense. Flavors and foods define eras in our past and, like certain smells or old songs, conjure memories. Looking back over the past year, what meals do we recall, and what memories are triggered? I remember the first radish I ate from my tiny Shanghai garden: sweet and slightly spicy. It made me think of my mother’s garden, and of writer/ farmer Wendel Berry's assertion that, "Eating is an agricultural act ... Eating ends the annual drama that begins with planting and birth."

Restaurateur Eduardo Vargas recalls this last year of eating culminating with a Bacchanalian (or Eduardian?) feast which he calls "the most memorable meat I ever ate in my life." On a recent trip to Tuscany, "We rented this 100-year-old house with an old brick oven which we used to cook steak florentina with rosemary from the garden," he says. "It was the most amazing meal, with wines from the area. Whenever I see the others who were there, we always talk about this meal." Sometimes simple foods give the strongest impressions. Brian Tan from House of Flour (Cafes) praises his ayi's homestyle cuisine, like her chicken with ginger and soy. Even though Tan tries to "cut down on carbs" (a low-carb dieting pastry chef!), he goes back for a third bowl with rice when ayi is cooking. "People who cook at home have a different skill than those of us who cook commercially," he says.

I had many glorious simple meals in 2007. The first hairy crabs of the season, which I ate at a Shanghainese friend's home. Late nights of writing accompanied by steaming, guiltily-satisfying packaged fresh noodles with miso from Lawson's, topped with a fried egg and kimchi. Sauteed preserved egg and green peppers at Lao Tan Guizhou Cuisine (Guizhou / Guangxi). Volcanically spicy fuqifeipian beef lung slices at Tony Restaurant (Sichuan). The year's sweetest pomelo which I shared with a friend at midnight in my living room–the affordability of fresh fruit is just one of China's food blessings. A trip to the Tongchuan seafood market for seafood to cook with friends at home (a buttery flounder stole the show, and my clam chowder--pictured above--wasn't half bad).

I also had some extreme meals, meals so stimulating they nearly made my hair stand on end, like at Jade on 36 (Fusion) where I ecstatically devoured a surreal range of novel flavors. Brian Tan is intrigued by Paul Pairet's foie gras opera–a multi-layered chocolate, passionfruit and goose liver “cake.” "I'm a pastry chef. The way he plays with the food is quite memorable," says Tan. I think of the cart they wheel around at Leonardo's (Italian) in the Hilton, loaded with olive oil and olives so bursting with grassy flavors that I could have ended my meal with just that, and M on the Bund's (Fusion) pavlova, a pile of dizzyingly creamy yet light-as-cloud tropical flavors.

Shanghai, it's a good place to be an eater. It may not have all the foods from our childhoods, but the choices are vast, and multiplying. As we look ahead to 2008, I think of many new memories to be tasted and tastes to be memorized.

View all my latest articles under my Dining Blog - The Dish