Moon Over Miami is not a great musical. It's not a great food movie either, but it contains enough moments of general culinary weirdness to make it notable, a quality heightened by its lush use of Technicolor shading. Such coloring is, in my opinion, the explanation for the bizarre detail above, in which a jar of pre-made guacamole sauce (pronounced, hilariously, as "gwaca malla") appears in a deep red hue, likely thanks to the fact that the person in charge of the inking had no idea what it was. The odd pronunciation was explained in a recent episode of the linguistics podcast Lexicon Valley, which originally put me on to this cinematic curio; other questions, such as why guacamole is being jarred in the first place, or why the person preparing it describes it as an essential part of her famous hamburger recipe, are a bit harder to answer. The story here concerns a get-rich-quick scheme set up by a Texan ingenue (played by Betty Grable), which involves parlaying a paltry inheritance into faking largesse for a week or so, raiding the “millionaire’s colony” of Miami Beach to snag a wealthy husband. This hastily-conceived scam involves her sister posing as her secretary (I’m not sure, beyond plot contrivances, why they both couldn’t have pretended to be heiresses to increase their chances of success) and her aunt (pictured above, with her famous gwacamalla) as her housemaid. The film begins with an aborted dance number at Texas Tommy’s, a drab hash house with carhop waitresses (Grable’s character included) that caters to a primary clientele of rumpled, dyspeptic businessmen on their way to work. The restaurant’s name seems to bear no actual relationship to the Texas Tommy, the Pottstown, Pennsylvania delicacy supposedly invented in the 1950s, although both may be referring back to a common point, possibly this early 20th century dance craze. Here, in a beautiful example of the absurdities of upper-class refinement, two men in evening dress delicately spreading cheese dip onto potato chips. I’m not sure whether this was intended as a joke. Late in the film, we get a brief glimpse of something referred to as “Gashouse Eggs,” a rustic appellation possibly derived from Gasthaus Eggs, used to describe a dish with a million names if it has one. That does seem like an excessive amount of frying oil. Finally, a dish that's discussed but not pictured (as is sadly, but understandably, often the case with foods on film): chicken livers served for breakfast, a mostly bygone tradition that still survives in recipe form. A further example of culinary refinement, it serves as the rich man's rejoinder to the grubbier fare served at the women's run-down Texas roadhouse. I'd probably stick with the latter, however, especially if it would give me a chance to try Aunt Susan's mysterious gwaca malla burger.
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The coded language of snacks, sandwiches and seasonings, in NYC and beyond.
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