Two visions of plentitude via the Ghost of Christmas Present, from Ronald Neame's Scrooge (1970) and Edwin Marin's A Christmas Carol (1938). One a fantasy of overabundance, the other less likely to produce leftovers.
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A scene at a late-night diner in Jean-Pierre Melville’s Two Men in Manhattan, revealing some odd selections on its abbreviated menu. Gefilte Fish tops the list, with a trim 40 cent price tag that would equal out to a little under $4 today. Below that things get a bit fuzzier, although a little digging led me to the existence of Pickle Fleisch, sometimes spelled as Pickel Fleisch, which would fit with the obstructed text fragment on the second line of the board. This is not a dish I’ve ever heard of, nor something you’d ever encounter at a modern diner, but this academic paper describes it as an Alsatian Jewish cousin to pastrami. This fits perfectly, since Melville (born with far less flair as Jean-Pierre Grumbach) was himself a French Alsatian Jew by origin. As always, however, this only brings up more questions. Did this dish ever actually dot the menus of NYC Jewish boîtes, or did the director simply add it to his own fantasy menu of comfort food favorites? The NYPL’s menu archive turns up nothing on a variety of spellings, although this is far from definitive proof of anything. What it does confirm is that the item below on the list is definitely farfel. Meanwhile, here’s a sauce for that Pickel Fleisch.
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The coded language of snacks, sandwiches and seasonings, in NYC and beyond.
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