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Midnight in Paris and a Golden Age Cocktail

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It’s the end of May and I’m hosting Midnight in Paris for Food ‘n Flix.  You can read the announcement post here.  

So, it stands to reason that I am probably the last person to post.  (That being said, the deadline is actually tomorrow, May 31.)

Let me get this out there first off:   I am not a Woody Allen film fanatic.   It seems to me that one either adores and idolizes Allen or abhors and despises him.  There’s no middle ground.  Except for this film.

Midnight in Paris is a quirky love affair with the “City of Lights” as well as the carefree Roaring 20s.

Gil (played by the Owen Wilson) is a would-be novelist and ingenue.  He adores everything about Paris.  (Gil’s love affair with Paris and the way Paris morphs from a place to an actual character reminds me of Rose’s view of the city from The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Season 2.)  As he and his obnoxiously spoiled fiance, Inez, tag along on her father’s business trip, Gil tries over and over to get her to connect to this romantic city.   Inez and her family just do not get it.

Gil finds his people, albeit in the Paris of the 1920s.  He “travels” back in time via a classic Renault and finds himself hobnobbing with every famous American ex-pat, artist, celebrity, and character that graced the city.

That’ all I’m writing at this point.  I don’t want to spoil the fun.  I will say that I loved seeing my favorite authors of American literature brought to life.   Zelda and Scott are just cute.  Hemingway is over-the-top and speaks in the same terse manner of his writing.  Of course, one of the best writers of the twentieth century, T. S. Eliot makes a cameo.

I paused before I recommended hosting this film for Food ‘n Flix.  There’s not a lot of food on the screen but there is quite a bit of food references (and lots of potent potables flowing).

  • Champagne
  • Baguettes
  • Le Grand Véfour Restaurant 
  • Brasserie Lipp
  • Sauerkraut and Frankfurters (James Joyce)
  • Wine tasting
  • More champagne on the way back in time.
  • Bathtub gin
  • Whiskey Sour
  • Bourbon
  • “Grain and grappa”
  • Crémerie-Restaurant Polido
  • Profiteroles
  • French food, “too rich for me,” and more wine
  • Bad oyster
  • Blancmange (or panna cotta)
  • Dessert and espresso
  • Indian food/pita bread/naan
  • Fruit, orange juice, hard boiled eggs (room service)
  • Tea and cookies at Stein’s
  • Bœuf Bourguignon
  • More wine (with heart palpitations)  
  • Pigeon macaron cake (surrealist wedding)
  • Grapes
  • Champagne at Maxim’s
  • Absinthe (on Toulouse-Lautrec’s table)
  • French coca cola and beer at outdoor cafe
  • offer of a cup of coffee (right before the rain starts to fall)

Since there was so much imbibing in the film (hey, it was the twenties), I decided to create a cocktail.   I based mine on one that was actually created to celebrate the film, The French Connection.

Just a little tipsy.

I entitled it the Golden Age Cocktail based on that pedantic (and presumptuous) fellow’s pronouncement of Gil’s preoccupation with the 1920s.

Golden Age Cocktail

Based on The French Connection

I toned down the alcohol a bit here so you can plan on carousing and doing the Charleston all night.

Ingredients

  • 1 or 2 oz. cognac
  • 2/4 oz. fresh lemon juice
  • 1/2 oz. simple syrup
  • 4 fresh and very ripe raspberries
  • Sparkling water to top (I used a cranberry flavored one.)
  • mint leaf and one more raspberry for garnish

Instructions

  1. Combine all ingredients with ice in a cocktail shaker, and shake well to break down the raspberries.
  2. Strain the mixture through a fine-meshed sieve into a rocks glass filled with fresh ice. Top with a splash of sparking water.
  3. Garnish with mint leaf and another raspberry.

Yield: 1

I enjoyed this cocktail.  My raspberries didn’t smash up and release their juices so my drink isn’t a lovely pink color but it does represent the Golden Age well.  

I also think this would be good with bourbon for more of an Amber Age Cocktail.  🙂

There’s definitely more famous dead people seen or mentioned in the film—authors and artists and other notable figures from 1920s Paris—along with a few from the Belle Epoque era:

  • Cole Porter
  • Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald
  • Jean Cocteau
  • Josephine Baker
  • Ernest Hemingway  (The character reminds me of how Keanu Reeves played himself in another Food ‘n Flix feature, Always Be My Maybe.)
  • Juan Belmonte
  • Gertrude Stein
  • Alice B. Toklas
  • Pablo Picasso
  • Coco Chanel
  • Braque
  • Modigliani
  • Archibald MacLeish
  • Djuna Barnes
  • Salvador Dali
  • Luis Buñuel 
  • Man Ray
  • T.S. Eliot
  • Matisse
  • Leo Stein
  • Toulouse-Lautrec
  • Gauguin 
  • Degas
  • William Faulkner

I hope that the Food ‘n Flix group enjoyed this film.   I love it and have seen it enough times that I might be obsessed, but I’ve got nothing on this guy.

Thanks for playing along this month.   I’ll have a round-up of all the participants’ posts up soon.

Food ‘n Flix is a monthly get-together and is open for anyone to participate.  We watch the chosen film with foodie-goggles on, become inspired, whip up a dish and post a short review.  Join Food ‘n Flix in June for your choice of any movies set or filmed in Hawaii.  Culinary Adventures with Camilla  is hosting.   Hmm….all I can think of at this point is an Elvis movie.   I’m off to research this.


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