MARMITE NIGHTS

Comfort reading is probably better for you than comfort eating, though sometimes they overlap.

I read a little more PG Wodehouse, specifically ‘The Juice of an Orange’ which is about an essentially benign Hollywood screenwriter, Wilmot Mulliner, who’s put on all-orange-juice diet by his doctor, and he becomes a good deal less benign as a result.  Hunger makes him mean and angry.  

He goes to a story conference at which his boss Jacob Z. Schnellenhamer

has a pile of sandwiches on his desk (at least some of them beef), ‘A scenario-writer, informed of the facts of the case, would undoubtedly have thought of those sandwiches as Sandwiches of Fate.’

 Schnellenhamer ‘was not one of those men who can eat sandwiches aloofly and, as it were, surreptitiously.  When he ate a sandwich there was no concealment or evasion ... There was a brio, a gusto about his performance which stripped it of all disguise.  His sandwich flew before him like a banner.’

The famished Mulliner can’t stand it. He blows his top.  ‘Stop it! I say,’ thundered Wilmot, ‘stop eating those sandwiches immediately.’  And he’s immediately fired, but one way or another his meanness and anger is appreciated and respected and he becomes the business manager of Hortensia Burwash  who’s also been on a similar diet.

Which brings me to Helen Mirren as so many things do.  I’ve belatedly started following her on Instagram and she posted the above picture with the caption, ‘Maybe my most favorite super.  Any guesses?’  The image got over 23,000 likes and over 1,500 comments many of which are frankly absurd, suggesting she’s eating jelly, fig jam or Branston pickle with her cheese. A few do cheese and Marmite, which is what it looks like to me, and  sounds fair enough for an Essex girl like Helen.

I also found the above pic of Ms. Mirren drinking in a place called Pal’s Lounge her stepson’s bar in New Orleans.  The cocktail is called, a Helen F***ing Mirren.  Foaming perhaps.  Apparently it contains ‘Belle Isle honey habanero Moonshine habanero, house-made Crescent Vodka Earl Grey tincture with a Belle Isle honey habanero Moonshine lollipop floating on top.’  There are many things I don’t want on top of an alcoholic drink the lollipop is very definitely one of them.  

I also used to think Marmite was another, but most Marmite cocktails just have Marmite around the rim of the glass which is actually not much different from salt around the rim of a Margarita.

THE PARTIES YOU AND I DON'T GET INVITED TO

  

This picture appeared in the Evening Standard a couple of nights ago (it’s from Instagram), and the caption read, ‘Cara Delevingne shared a glass of champagne with Tilda Swinton and Helen Mirren at a Chanel party.

’  

You’d think Chanel could afford to give them a glass each, wouldn’t you?

IF IT'S GOOD ENOUGH FOR HELEN MIRREN ...

My pal Anthony suggested we go for lunch to Versailles, a Cuban restaurant on Venice Boulevard.  I’d never heard of it and he was surprised, and I’m sure I should have.  Everybody else seems to know it and most people seem to love it.  It gets 4 stars on Yelp (which of course means nothing much) but some reviewers say they’ve been going there happily since the 90s, and it was, apparently, founded in 1981.  

According to an article in the Daily Telegraph Helen Mirren has been known to eat there, and considers it part of her “perfect weekend,” though perhaps she doesn't go there dressed like this:  But hot damn, in any case.

As for why a Cuban restaurant would be named Versailles, I have no idea.  The waiter we asked certainly had no idea either, but then I didn’t really expect him to. I had a Cuban sandwich, which was as good as any.

And the oxtail stew was probably better, without being absolutely spectacular - those mushy things you see there are plantains.

But the place had a good vibe – cavernous rather than cozy, rough at the edges, waiters who are a long way from being obsequious.  I had no complaints.

But afterwards I thought, as I often do, what does Jonathan Gold have to say about this place?  And I found an LA Weekly review.  He wasn’t keen but it was one of those generous bad reviews that he’s rather good at. He writes “everybody but me, it appears, adores the crisp-skinned roast chicken.” “As usual my friend Margaret tells me I don’t know what I’m talking about." A bad review that would leave most restaurant owners feeling not too hurt. 

But then I noticed the date of that Gold review - December 9, 1998.  Blimey. I suppose it’s just conceivable that he might have changed his mind in the last 20 years.  

But that left me thinking, whatever happened to ephemerality?  Thanks to the Internet a 20 year old restaurant review remains “current.”  In 1998 I’m not sure I even really understood what the Internet was.  But I do remember a time when I used to think that a piece of writing wasn’t “real” unless it was printed on paper.  Now I tend to think the opposite.  Eternal verities – they’re a bad mistress.

GWEN AND I

We went to Gwen, on Sunset Boulevard.  "Primal Elegance. World-class butcher meets elegant fine dining” says the website.

 It was very expensive indeed and just about worth it.  The lamb shank was deeply wonderful.

One of Gwen’s unique selling points, or at least design features, is that as you sit at your table you get to see all the hanging meat.

Which reminded me of The Cook The Thief His Wife and Her Lover, though to be fully accurate it would have needed a naked Helen Mirren in there as a kind of living art installation.  

One appealing curiosity of Gwen is that you get to choose which knife you use for your main course - see the pic at the top of this post  - I had the one that's third from the top, or one very like it.  

          And a curiosity which I assume was unique to me on the night: I went into the bathroom – and there was somebody at the sink, wearing a backless top, long braids, with a womanly bearing.  I was perfectly sure I was in the men’s, so I thought oh well, the times are gender fluid and I did my business and went to wash my hands which involved standing next to the backless braided woman and I definitely didn’t stare, but this character turned to me and said, “I’m NOT in the wrong bathroom.”

         And with the lightning wit for which I’m famous, I replied, ”Well that’s all right then.”

Curtis Stone, the celebrity chef/owner was in attendance: Kim Gordon was not.

MIRREN SAUCE

Speaking of Oprah Winfrey, she was one of the producers (Stephen Spielberg shares some of the blame too) of a movie I just saw titled The Hundred Foot Journey.  Since the action takes place in France you might think it could be called The 30.48 Metre Walk, but it’s not the kind of movie that responds to much interrogation.

It’s the old story: self-taught Indian cook from Mumbai moves with his family to a super-picturesque village in France, sets up an Indian restaurant opposite a pre-existing fancy French restaurant that has one Michelin star.  Antagonism ensues, but is is overcome.  Self-taught Indian cook self-teaches himself French cuisine, goes to work at the French restaurant, gets them another Michelin star, then moves to Paris to become a molecular gastronomist.

Scenes were shot in Le Georges restaurant in the  Pompidou Centre.

But wouldn't you know it, he finds his heart is back in the French restaurant with the French fille he loves, and he returns to get them their third star. The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover, it was not, despite the presence of Helen Mirren.

 Anyway, the movie was trite and predictable, and infinitely manipulative, but somehow irresistible.  The acting was all pretty good, and Helen Mirren of course was magnificent, because she always is, despite in this case brandishing a French accent that Inspector Clouseau would think was ridiculous.

One morning in the movie she berates the kitchen staff in her restaurant for serving droopy asparagus the night before.  Quite why she waits till the morning after to do the berating isn’t clear.  Surely she could have done it when, or before, the asparagus was being served.

Anyway, it’s true enough that droopy asparagus is a bad thing, which of course reminds one of this shot from The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover.  That asparagus could definitely be straighter.  Symbolic, probably.

STRANGERS ON A BINGE

So we saw went and saw the movie Hitchcock at the weekend.  This blog ain’t called Psycho for nothing.  Norman Bates: "Birds really eat a tremendous lot. But -I-I don't really know anything about birds. My hobby is stuffing things."

 It was good. It’s a very rare movie about middle aged, or possibly even old age, love.  You know that Hitchcock and his wife Alma Reville - both 60ish at the time - are going to end up together even as you know they stoke psychotic impulses each other.  This may be too sophisticated an observation for mainstream moviegoers to embrace fully, though the movie seems to be doing reasonably well at the box office.

The best food scene features an anguished Hitchcock (Anthony Hopkins), fearing that  Alma (Helen Mirren) is being unfaithful, and opening up the domestic fridge in the middle of the night and eating what I imagine must have been thousands of dollars worth of foie gras.  Alma comes upon her husband and joins in – with a jar of caviar.

I think I have eaten as much foie gras in my life as I shall ever really want to (based more on taste-preference rather than any moral sense), but I’m left with the sudden feeling that I haven’t eaten nearly enough caviar.  Still time to rectify that, I suppose.

Evidence below that the "real life" characters weren't quite as glam as Hopkins and Mirren, though their surroundings certainly look opulent enough.

I couldn’t find a still from the movie showing the foie gras eating scene, but I did find this still of the real Alfred Hitchcock with a goose.  The master of suspense indeed.

I also found this image of Alma, a fridge and Hitchcock’s wax head.  There’s definitely one, and maybe two cans of foie gras in that fridge.