Every year, we watch the Oscars while enjoying a meal inspired by the Best Picture nominees. For example, we had sushi for Lost in Translation, cowboy campfire beans for Brokeback Mountain and Grandma Ethel’s Brisket for A Serious Man – you get the idea. The high point has been the Severed Hands Ice Sculpture in 2011 for 127 Hours and Winter’s Bone (photo below). Here’s last year’s menu, centered on Reynolds Woodcock’s (Daniel Day-Lewis) comically elaborate breakfast order from Phantom Thread.
This year’s dinner will be built around Mexican cuisine as a tribute to Roma, the Oscar-nominated movie that we most admire. We’ll have some shrimp (the family dines at the beach resort restaurant with the giant octopus sculpture outside) and The Movie Gourmet’s famous elote (street corn). The table will be adorned with references to the other Best Picture nominees.
So here is this year’s menu:
Gambas al ajillo, elote, frijoles y arroz from Roma.
Jack Daniels from A Star Is Born. A fifth of JD Black, just like the one drained by Jack (Bradley Cooper) in his limo.
Fried chicken from Green Book: Tony Lip (Viggo Mortensen) lights up with Kentucky Fried Chicken! In Kentucky! When’s that ever gonna happen!.
Cake with blue icing from The Favourite: In one of the least appetizing food scenes in recent cinema, Queen Anne (Olivia Colman), gout and all, battles this cake.
Almond croissant from Vice: Offered some food at a meeting, Dick Cheney (Christian Bale) mumbles, “Nah, I’m eating healthy” – and then scarfs something from the pastry tray.
Coors from BlacKkKlansman: Something for all those Colorado Springs white supremacists.
Purple potion from Black Panther: Not having any real superhero potion, The Wife and I faked it with a sports drink.
Novelty false teeth for Bohemian Rhapsody. As a table decoration, we chose novelty false teeth to represent the horrible prosthetic teeth that Rami Malek had to wear as Freddie Mercury. The real Freddie was a very handsome guy with prominent teeth; the movie Freddie is downright horse-faced – and it’s a terrible distraction from Malek’s fine performance. Speaking of which, on YouTube, you can find a side-by-side of the actual Queen performance at LiveAid and the Bohemian Rhapsody version – great stuff. Still, why is this movie nominated for Best Picture?
My thanks to The Wife, who has been the real driving force behind this meal in the past few years.
