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    This mostly-raw blueberry pie is a snap to make and very versatile--the filling microwaves in a few minutes, and you don't even have to bake the zippy gingered graham cracker crust--perfect for a hot Fourth of July and all summer long.

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“The Trip”: supposedly about the food?

Posted on July 4, 2011 by DebbieN

Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon have paired up again in a new movie called The Trip  and I actually got to see it in an actual movie theater Thursday! First time I’ve been in a theater since Ratatouille came out. (Hadn’t realized that was going to be a foodie movie; at the time I just wondered why they didn’t make good movies like that for grownups anymore.)

I was going to see The Trip anyway because I’d seen Tristram Shandy several years ago on disk and got bitten by Coogan and Brydon’s backstage banter. I was looking forward to seeing how the pair,  who had played exaggerated versions of themselves in the first movie, were planning to stretch their dueling Robert deNiro and Al Pacino impressions from the end credits of Tristram Shandy–by far the best shtick in the whole thing–to a two-hour buddy road trip format.

And The Trip was also supposed to be about food–specifically, the current state of northern England’s upscale eateries (now apparently as haute as anywhere on the continent) and the shockingly savage and comical food reviewing traditions of British news media.

So I dragged my husband with me to the matinee and promptly started disregarding the “please, no talking during the film” signs. What fun is it to sit there not giggling horribly as Coogan and Brydon get on the road north to Yorkshire, or saying nothing to my mate as they try to correct each other’s Michael Caine impressions and improve on them in increasingly loud voices while being served all manner of square food on long rectangular plates lapped with flavored foams à la Adrià? With the inevitable scallops for starters, and a number of historical interludes–a sleep in one of Coleridge’s beds, visiting the church ruins in a town where Ian McKellan did not actually grow up, but it’s got the same name, so it counts?

The truth is, of course, that The Trip is much less about food (despite several spliced-in foodie snippets of what’s going on in the kitchens and pans where tasting menus are being prepared) than about love, loss, what’s left to look forward to in one’s encroaching middle-40s, and how to impress girls with your Michael Caine (or Al Pacino) impressions at a 3-star restaurant in the Yorkshire dales or the Lake District.

Of course, the sixth or seventh rendition of Michael Caine (interspersed with Pacino and friends) starts to wear even on our intrepid actors-almost-playing-themselves as they grapple with the hearts they refuse to admit are pinned to their sleeves. It turns out there’s a solid reason for this: Continue reading →

Filed under: Eating out, Food TV, haute cuisine, movies, Odd food | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on “The Trip”: supposedly about the food?