Every week we ask everyone who hangs out around here to answer a tough question. This week:

What would you eat for your last meal?

Rules are simple: What’s that one special dish? This doesn’t necessarily have to be a meal you eat in prison but knowing your kind, it probably will be. I like to think of it as your last meal before you evolve beyond the need for food. Is that better? Hard to say.

Alex Russell

On my Yelp profile (a thing I created at an age when I thought I would need a Yelp profile) I answered this question with the terrible joke “the antidote!” Here I will offer a more sincere answer: a full pound of pulled pork, coleslaw, BBQ beans, and the hottest, smokiest sauce you can get your hands on. Add four fingers of bourbon with three ice cubes and an unsettling amount of dill pickle chips on the side. My plan is to fall asleep in a food coma, because if I’m going out I’m at least gonna be so drunk on pork that I don’t even care.

Jonathan May

I’m assuming this is meant to be my last meal in prison. Given that there exist no special last meal restrictions in Tennessee (in Oklahoma, the cap is $15; Florida $40), I would request the ingredients to make beef bourguignon: cubed tenderloin, onions, carrots, tomato, an herb bouquet, bacon, beef stock, and red wine (preferably something dry and expensive). This dish, made famous by Julia Child, takes around four hours to make, during which time I would drink the remainder of the red wine. Around two hours in, the aroma starts to waft around me, reminding me of all the happier times under which I’d made this fragrant stew. I would request to share the meal with the prison warden; why not dine with the man who signs away your life? For dessert? Ice-cold M&M’s.

Stephanie Feinstein

Soup Course: Tonkotsu ramen (“muddy pork broth”, it is magical) with extra nori and bamboo, with Hana Awaka sparkling sake

Main Course:  My mom’s chicken tetrazzini, that I cannot replicate correctly at my own home, accompanied by pillowy crescent sticks, with Sofia Blanc de Blanc sparkling wine

Dessert Course: a gigantic slice of tiramisu, traditional style, with an espresso dopio to drink.

Mike Hannemann

Last meal is tricky. You can either go comfort food you know you enjoy or something you would never be able to afford had you not done whatever it is you are about to be put to death for (I assume this is a Green Mile scenario). Honestly, I’d go simple: a couple dinner rolls, a small steak filet, maybe some potatoes. The real treat would be a glass of fine, vintage scotch. Not a dinkin’ scotch. One you sip two fingers of, over the course of an hour to experience the moment. It’s how I celebrated the weddings of my brother and two of my best friends so I figure that’s also worthy of my last hours on Earth.

Oh, and maybe the spiral kind of macaroni and cheese, but not the normal kind, because it tastes better.

Andrew Findlay

What a morbid question. My last meal will probably be a rich buffet of fear and confusion as I feel my life leaving my body, which, God, how terrifying. Assuming there is a flawless prediction and I have been told with indubitable accuracy when I will die, I would prepare myself multiple meals:

1. Ribeye steak cooked rare, roasted asparagus, and Lagavulin.
2. A nice pinot noir from Burgundy, duck confit, and a plate of Brie, Camembert, and other selections much runnier and smellier.
3. Like 84 hot wings. Actually, this last one is probably what would kill me.

Brent Hopkins

My last meal would be the best cheeses, meats, and crackers I could find, washed down with a nice red wine. May as well go out classy as F&^*. A cigar would also be on that list, if that counts as dessert.