New York Magazine’s Grub Street blog points to a glorified press release wire story about the menu created by James Sakatos at the Carlyle Cafe for the Academy’s official New York Oscar viewing party, with one course devoted to each of the five Best Picture nominees. Sakatos says he watched all five films in a weekend and took copious notes before putting the menu together, but he’s apparently not much of a deep reader, because each entree is a thuddingly literal interpretation of the film’s themes––and at least one isn’t even accurate.

For instance: There Will Be Blood is represented by Sakatos’ favorite dish of the five, a squid ink risotto with mushrooms, cuttlefish and blood orange foam. That sounds awesome, but the last thing I think of when I think of Daniel Plainview is a delicate seafood risotto. Check out Sakatos’ description of why this is more appropriate than, say, cold steak and a milkshake: “The black ink brings to mind the film’s oil gushers, with blood orange foam to remind diners of the struggle and, of course, the title.” OF COURSE. How silly of me.

Way, way, way worse, is Sakatos’ justification of how Dover sole is the embodiment of Michael Clayton: …Read more

Actor/game show host/former Nixon speechwriter Ben Stein published a love letter to the soon-to-close Hollywood eatery Morton’s in Sunday’s New York Times. A splooge sample:

My wife and I and all of our friends are devastated. I guess we’ll eat seaweed at Mr Chow. But as far as I know, there now is no Hollywood-center-of-power cafe. Mr Chow would be the closest, especially for the music business. Yet for television and movies, it’s a sad, sad time. For those of us who considered Morton’s as much of a home as our own kitchens, it’s tragic.

Dana Harris had a markedly different take, writing up the closing on Variety’s The Knife blog in May:

But have you been to Mortons lately? I don’t think we’re going to be missing much. Nothing is wrong with the restaurant, but beyond its storied reputation, there isn’t much right. The booths are comfy and the servers are pro, but the menu is as dull and innocuous as its French-vanilla walls.

The two paragraphs above seem to reveal an evolution in the notion of Hollywood public space.

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This post is part of the Totally Unrelated blogathon. 

When Stu first asked me to participate in this blogathon, he hadn’t picked a name yet, but in describing the concept, he used the word “fatigued” – as in, the whole point is to write about what we think about when writing about film has us fatigued. And it’s probably foolish for me to admit this, but not only am I familiar with that fatigue – I actually have a back-up plan to combat it. When the days get really long and/or it starts to feel like I have nothing left to say, a little voice in the back of my head says, “Just get through today, and if it’s still bad, you can always go back to selling cheese.” This seems to do the trick.

A week before the 2003 blackout, I moved to New York to go to grad school with a suitcase, a computer, and less than a thousand dollars to my name. I had never been here for longer than a weekend, and knew no one. I was 23 and had nowhere to live, and absolutely no idea how insane that was. I somehow talked my way into a $600 room in a loft in South Williamsburg with seven roommates. I needed a job immediately, and Dean and Deluca was hiring. I wanted to work at their pasta counter––I’d been making handmade pasta, badly, since before puberty, and wanted to get really good at it—but Dean and Deluca’s pasta counter was just an offshoot of their cheese counter, so if I wanted to do one, I had to do the other.

Over the next couple of years, I sold cheese, I waited tables (extremely poorly—I’m a clutz), and eventually went to work at an artisanal pasta factory. I was getting a full culinary education by day, and toiling in academia at night. I didn’t sleep much, and by the end of it, I was friendless and probably clinically insane. And of course, I romanticize it like crazy.

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