We’d also like to taste Remy’s culinary masterwork.
As the days grow shorter, colder and wetter, there is no better time to indulge in a cozy night in with family or friends and a good comfort-watch. The time is also nigh to steel our waistlines for the annual Thanksgiving feast.
There have been a century of delectable depictions of food on film, from the fancifully imagined to the fancily fussed over. Rather than putting together a list of turkey dinners, here are a few memorable movie foods from around the globe that we wouldn’t mind as part of a diverse Thanksgiving spread.
Clearly, this is far from a comprehensive menu of mouthwatering movie moments. Consider it merely an appetizer, and a reminder of the sensory power of two-dimensional meals to evoke passions, memories, inspiration and cravings.
ITALIAN: TIMPANO FROM BIG NIGHT
The main attraction of the all-night dinner party of Big Night — a last-ditch effort from brothers Primo (Tony Shalhoub) and Secondo (Stanley Tucci) to save their family-owned restaurant by impressing an important guest — is the timpano, a complicated pasta dish that purportedly dates to the Renaissance. More than just a massive construction of vegetable ragout, meat, hard-boiled eggs and more, the bulging plate also serves as a metaphor for the brothers’ efforts to retain their Italian roots while struggling to prosper as first-generation immigrants in the 1950s.
Honorable mention: The onion-forward prison sauce from Goodfellas with its razor-thin slices of garlic.
FRENCH: RATATOUILLE FROM RATATOUILLE
Even a list as brief as this one would be criminally incomplete without a mention of the titular dish from this beloved Pixar film. It may have simple and rustic origins, but it’s prepared so immaculately by Remy that it triggers a childhood flashback in the film’s ostensible villain, the obdurate food critic Anton Ego. Part of Ratatouille’s magic lies in the way it channels director Brad Bird’s preoccupation with perfectionism into an uplifting parable about the emotionally transformative outcomes that perseverance in the pursuit of great (culinary) art can achieve.
Honorable mention: The meme-able scene of Tom Wilkinson holding a preposterous amount of baguettes in the legal thriller Michael Clayton — looking like he’s preparing to carbo-load for a yearlong marathon.
ASIAN: THE PERFECT RAMEN FROM TAMPOPO
A strong contender for the most food-obsessed film of all time, Jûzô Itami’s 1985 Japanese cult classic Tampopo features a number of memorable onscreen victuals: decadent multicourse meals ordered by a gangster and his moll, a clandestine omurice omelet made under cover of night by a vagabond, and this ideal bowl of ramen as prepared by Tampopo. A single mother whose kitchen is given a much needed makeover when a longhaul trucker blows into town and commits to helping perfect her recipe, Tampopo’s quest for greatness provides a narrative spine for this otherwise picaresque comedy of manners to drape its tapestry of comical vignettes upon.
Honorable mentions: The savory breakfast from Howl’s Moving Castle and any of the Taiwanese family’s meals from Eat Drink Man Woman.
Dining and Cooking