[Sca-cooks] Thanks for Ruggles

[Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius]

On Feb 23, 2010, at 10:44 PM, kingstaste at comcast.net wrote:

> 
> 
> Dearest Adamantius, 
> 
>    A few years ago when we were compiling the Food Movies list, you insisted on including a little-known gem called "Ruggles of Red Gap".  I had never heard of it or seen it until this evening.  I was channel flipping through the guide when I saw that it was currently playing on AMC.

Baron Ateno called me on my cell phone and told me the same thing... me, opinionated???

>   Unfortunately, I only caught the second half, but what a delightful film it is!  Charles Laughton plays a gentleman's gentleman in the old west, who eventually decides to stand on his own two feet and open a restaurant instead of continue in his family's tradition of being in service.  It is a wonderful food movie as well, although I think I missed most of the best food parts earlier in the movie.  I will be watching the guide to see if I can't catch the whole thing soon! 

The opening scene makes reference to his employer's indigestion and all the things he can't eat (which of course he has eaten the previous evening, hence his condition). Later there is a nice (and only slightly sexist) rant on the subject of male cooks, as well as tea and scone making. 

Come to think of it, there's a running gag about ham and eggs that keeps turning up in different permutations throughout the script... my son is fond of teasing his mother on the subject of people who can't cook ham and eggs properly, and insist on "always doing something Chinese" to them. "Voulez-vous... hammy-eggy?"

> Thank you for suggesting it, and for anyone that happens to catch it while it is playing, I'll add my recommendations to Adamantius'.   Go see it! 

And still the best recitation of the Gettysburg Address ever heard, anywhere, IMO...

Adamantius






"Most men worry about their own bellies, and other people's souls, when we all ought to worry about our own souls, and other people's bellies."
			-- Rabbi Israel Salanter