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The 51 best food-on-film moments of all time
Great cinema can be a feast for the eyes â and a great cinematic meal can be as fulfilling as a literal feast. Done right, watching food onscreen can be a sensorial experience akin to actually consuming it, especially when it becomes part of the narrative itself. On this list of the most delectable scenes ever put on film, weâre serving up moments thatâll make your mouth water, cause your stomach to growl and maybe even cause you to loosen your belt. (Please be mindful if youâre on public transport or at work.) Some might also make you feel a bit nauseous â the act of eating isnât always pretty, after all. In any case, get your antacids ready and belly up for the best food-on-film moments ever. Recommended: đ„ The 100 best movies of all-timeđ° The 50 best gangster movies of all-timeđ The 70 best romantic comedies of all-time
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Alder
In certain circlesâwhere pork bellyâs sustainability and the legitimacy of the Worldâs 50 Best Restaurants are subjects of debateâWylie Dufresne can be as disruptive a topic as harem pants, cilantro or Benghazi. Drop his name into polite conversation and watch the mood ripple. The chefâs particular brand of gastronomic black arts has been dividing opinion for more than a decade at wd~50âthe original nucleus of North American avant-garde cuisine. There he cultivated his modernist, tongue-in-cheek approach, spawning curiosities like deep-fried mayonnaise and scrambled-egg ravioli. Critics call it gimmicky, fans find it magical, but either way youâve got to hand it to him: Whereas other chefs of his standing cashed in with soulless expansion plans, the man stayed focused on his Lower East Side spot, lapping every other New York kitchen in innovation and sheer pluck. So it was something of a bombshell when Dufresne announced heâd be opening a second restaurant, one that seemed attuned to the way the food world has changedâdownscaled and relaxedâsince wd~50 debuted in 2003. At his new gastropub, Alder, Dufresne is still challenging the orthodoxy of serious cooking, presenting familiar flavors in surprising new frameworks. Whatever you think of the twisty byways heâs exploring with his kitchen lieutenant, John Bignelli, this food is awfully easy to like. To enjoy a pigs-in-a-blanket riff, for example, you donât need to know that the wrappers encasing sweet Chinese sausage are Peppe

Nightingale 9
It isnât pretty, this murky brown salad. Take a look at those splinters of green papaya, gnarly rings of fried shallots and clots of air-dried beef. It could be a box of matches spilled in dishwaterâcertainly too homely for the pages of any respectable food magazine. But weâre evolved eaters here in New York City, too sophisticated to deny ugly things their fair shake. Taste it and understand the moral of a thousand childrenâs parables about inner beauty: This funky, crunchy bombshell of compulsive flavor might be the most interesting salad in Kings County. Like so many things at Nightingale 9, the papaya salad dressing is fortified with nuoc cham, a condiment as ubiquitous in Vietnam as mustard is in Germany. The sauce is a trick chef Robert Newton picked up while traveling through the Southeast Asian country before opening this passion project in February. Bottles of the stuffâmade here with fish sauce, lime juice, rice wine vinegar, sugar, garlic and chiliesâare in bins on every table, and dashes of it enhance just about everything. Follow its recklessly potent aroma through the menu of street food and noodle bowls, and you can eat very well at Nightingale 9. A toss of fluke and sweet crabmeat makes for a light on-ramp: The seafood is served in a shallow rice paper bowl with diced cucumber, sparks of Thai bird chilies and drifts of finely shredded coconut. The iconic Hanoi dish cha ca la vongâtypically turmeric-blasted fish served with a picklerâs pantry worth of dillâis s

The Pines
When an ambitious restaurant opens on fringe territory in New York, critics and buzz prospectors have a collective conniption. We trip over ourselves to declare a neighborhood an up-and-comerâBed-Stuy, Harlem, Long Island Cityâfanning down our excitement like a pack of overheated Scarlett OâHaras. Thatâs the tragic thing about a great chef planting a flag on virgin turf: The neighborhood story tends to overshadow the culinary one. But weâre not going to do that today. Because while the Pines may indeed be remoteâa few treacherous sniffs away from the Gowanus Canalâthe real news is that itâs simply an excellent restaurant. The chef is Angelo Romano, a Robertaâs vet who went on to cook serious food at the short-lived Masten Lake in Williamsburg. Heâs the woolly linebacker overseeing the open kitchen in back of the Pinesâa gob-smacking, aggressive-growth kind of talent and one of New York Cityâs more interesting iconoclasts right now. With his evocations of huckleberry and hyssop, knotweed and kumquat, Romanoâs menu makes a powerful point up front: ainât gonna be no hamburgers here. Instead, you might start with torn hunks of craggy semolina bread, plated among rosettes of locally cured beef bresaola and a puree of fermented tangerine. There are wispy slices of compressed testaâlike an offal loverâs birthday cakeâwith crumbles of lemony pastry and strawberries scattered over the patchwork of sticky, lush headcheese. An uni starter is a bicoastal duet, with the crunch of puffed a

Billâs Townhouse
We donât hunt rhino horn or elephant tusk in New York City. The big game in this townâfor restaurateurs, anywayâis old-world dining rooms. Recently, many of our withering restaurant institutions have been sold off, scrubbed clean and rebranded: Cigarette smoke patinas approximated with sponge painting, the scratchy purr of phonograph music piped in through cutting-edge sound systems. The best of these restaurants function as savvy preservationsâbetter a raw-bar tower than a bank branch, after all. Keith McNally did stellar work at Minetta Tavern; Gabe Stulman at Fedora; Wilson Tang at Nom Wah Tea Parlor. But other projects, like Billâs Food & Drink, feel a touch more cynical. Until a landlord dispute forced its saloon doors to swing shut in March 2012, the Prohibition-vintage barroom Billâs Gay Nineties had a die-hard fandom. Whiskey flowed, shrimp cocktails were gobbled up on green-checked tablecloths, and pianist Rick McDonald banged out standards on the creaky upright. But late last year, the reins of this 88-year legacyâheld since the â70s by Barbara Bart Olmsted, who inherited the place from her fatherâwere handed to John DeLucie, a chef with plenty of experience cashing in on urban nostalgia at spots like the Waverly Inn and the Lion. In place of the period-authentic vaudeville Playbills and prizefighter placards that used to line the dining room walls, there are now gilded mirrors, mounted taxidermy and arbitrary portraits of plutocrats. Where once there were unfussy f

Pearl & Ash
Letâs all ease into a rocking chair for a moment and remember a time in New Yorkânot so long agoâwhen you could recognize a French bistro by the aroma of its coq au vin and a Spanish spot by the crust on its paella. Much has changed in the past few years. Many of our chefs have hopped the rails, rejecting the limitations of a single cuisine and borrowing from a global pantry. For the most part, this has been a very good thing. Neofusion has yielded lots of delicious things to eat, like Korean tacos, jambalaya arancini and matzo-ball ramen soup. But this culinary Wild West has also spawned its share of confused restaurants, helmed by chefs short-circuiting their efforts with too many possibilities. So it is at ambitious Bowery newcomer Pearl & Ash: There are plenty of good ideas brewing, but the restaurant feels caught in a creative fog. The chef is Richard Kuo, a Taiwan-born Australian who logged time at Corton and wd~50 before opening Williamsburgâs celebrated but short-lived New Nordic pop-up Frej with Fredrik Berselius. Pearl & Ash, his first solo project, occupies a long space in the ground floor of the Bowery House, a flophouse turned chic hostel. It smacks a bit of Momofuku with bare wooden tables, backless stools at the bar and a fresh-faced sommelier sporting a Joy Division tee. But here the seats are lined with blue velvet, and a strange â90s soundtrack of Sublime and Marcy Playground warbles through the speakers. Kuo leans on Asian flavors (bonito, shiso) for his gl