The first meal I remember

I grew up eating decent food. Home cooking, prepared fresh, with very little of the so-called "convenience food" that comes out of a box. I was lucky in that respect.

However, I also grew up in southern Florida, long enough ago that the so-called "Floribbean" cuisine hadn't really taken root. So I was living in a region without a distinct food culture. That, and mom's mid-west farm upbringing meant my culinary outlook was somewhat limited. Meat, potatoes, and vegetables, with the occasional Americanized "ethnic" dish - usually spaghetti with a tomato-based meat sauce.

So it was with some surprise that I found myself one night being served a dish prepared by an old-school Italian gentleman. He must have retired down there from somewhere up in the North East - everyone above a certain age in Florida at that time was a retiree from the North East. It was a plate of spaghetti but there was no red sauce to be found. Instead, it had a faint sheen, bits of something green - and even weirder, it was cold (rather, it was "room temperature," but to a kid, that was basically the same thing).

I wasn't sure what to make of this, but I knew it would be rude to not try it, and I was hungry. I was always hungry. So I ate some.

Wow.

The sheen was olive oil - which was no where near as common back in the early '80's as it is now. The green stuff was parsley, which up till that point was just something that sat on the side of my plate when I was eating at Denny's. But more - there was garlic, minced so fine that it wasn't visibly apparent. There was some sort of vinegar, I'm guessing white wine, since there was no color but a strong taste. There was some citrus, lemon, if I recall, probably zest.
That was probably it. I was young, though, and my interest in food hadn't developed enough for me to ask about it. I've tried to duplicate it from memory several times since then, but something is always off about it. I've hunted through cookbooks and checked all over the internet, but as with so many great recipes, this one probably only ever existed in the head of the chef. I've managed some decent tasting pasta, to be sure, but it has never been as good as that first time.

I can think of reasons for that beyond not having the taste right - the "first time" is always memorable, and can never be duplicated - but I'd love to be able figure out just how that flavor was constructed.
I don't think that this was the moment where I fell in love with food. I'm sure that came later, as I started doing more cooking and messing about in the kitchen, but that was the point at which I came to realize that the culinary landscape was far vaster than I had realized. That there was a whole world of food out there that I had yet to experience.