I want to ask you a question this morning: where would you eat if you didn’t have long to live? That was the title of a 2019 newspaper article written by Jay Rayner, the food critic for The Guardian newspaper in the UK. Back in May 2019, Jay received a letter from a reader named Hugh Paton. Hugh had just received a diagnosis of terminal cancer. He thought that the advice to “eat, drink and be merry” might be the best way to spend his remaining weeks or months, so he asked his favorite food critic to provide him a “bucket list” of the top 10 meals he should experience around the UK before he died.

Rayner drew up his “best of” list and posted Hugh’s story and the list of restaurants on Twitter. His post got an immediate reaction. People wrote in with their recommendations for the best meals…