gastropoda

I wasn’t going to point out that this was not the optimum year for food editors to be reaching for the Hoary file and digging out that beyond-hardy  perennial, the Oscar story with dishes pegged to nominees for best picture. Most reflexive examples I came across were merely predictably cringe-inducing, but the home of the Human Scratch N Match deserves a statuette of its own. A sample caption: “Nothing says bloodstain like a puree of beets.” And that’s for the movie just begging for a milkshake. “Silver dollar blinis” in honor of Javier Bardem’s penchant for forcing victims to play heads-you-die was equally tone-deaf idiotic, although even it was not as bad as deviled quail eggs for “Juno.” (That’s all the anti-choice crazies need, moviegoers craving ova.) Oh, and that “bread pudding” the wealthy British family in “Atonement” would have been familiar with? They forgot the bread. Are we really only weeks away from Erin-Go-Stupid on corned beef and cabbage?

Now that orange Tic Tacs have turned up in not one but two movies about literally fucked-up situations you would almost suspect the silly things are aphrodisiacs. Maybe whoever is product-placing them should be appointed  brand ambassador for what’s left of America when the Chimp finally knuckles back to his preserve in Texas. We’re going to need someone who can make shit as seductive as Shinola.

My consort and I watched the extraordinary “Four Months, Three Weeks and Two Days” from the very first row of the theater thanks to Bob Time, but it was still impossible to miss how powerfully food was woven through the story. The nature mort of fish over the hotel bed was a rich touch, as was the dog’s dinner of wedding leftovers. Plus how naive to socially inept would two girls have to be to bring cakes to offer an abortionist? Mostly there was the long scene at the table at a birthday party, which was excruciating but sounded oddly familiar. Then I placed it: A bunch of New Yorkers sitting around nattering about chicken liver. Oy. As they say.

“There Will Be Blood” may have been painful — I could barely walk after three hours crammed in my seat — but it was worth it not just for the sharp relevance but for two scenes. One takes place in a restaurant where the evildoer oilman (or is that redundant?) brings his son and uncouthly demands “steak, whiskey and goat’s milk” before another table of slightly slicker petroleum scumbags comes in and not only knows enough to wait for a menu but immediately starts nattering away 2007-style, wondering whether the fritters are the way to go. Cash v. class, the eternal struggle. Even better was the ending, when the profiteering E.O. is living in luxury but still eating just steak, and obscenely overcooked steak at that. It pretty much illustrates why restaurants in rich neighborhoods are inevitably so abysmal. Money can’t buy you taste. No wonder I have visions of GoFuckYourself eating his meat before it can even coagulate.