The 11 Best Food Scenes in Movie History

From Inglourious Basterds to When Harry Met Sally, here are the funniest food moments we'll never forget

Anyone see Get Him to the Greek over the weekend? Anyone? If you did, and if you've ever experienced absinthe — the real stuff — let us know if the absinthe scene was at all rooted in reality. In the meantime, we present the eleven greatest food scenes of all time. This is totally up for discussion, although any dissent will be wrong.

Inglourious Basterds (2009)

Never was the benign face of evil so nerve-wracking as when the SS Colonel Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz) sits at a posh restaurant talking endlessly about his tasty slice of strüdel with whipped cream, across the table from the Jewish cinema owner Shoshanna Dreyfus (Melanie Laureny), who is squirming out of fear that Landa knows she is a member of the French underground. Landa finishes his strüdel, smacks his lips, wipes his mouth, leans in, furrows his brow, pauses...then says, "I did have something else I wanted to ask you, but right now, for the life of me, I can't remember what it is. Oh, well, must not have been important. Till tonight."

Five Easy Pieces (1970)

Jack Nicholson (Bobby) tries to reason with a waitress who refuses to make any substitutions on the menu:




Waitress: You want me to hold the chicken, huh?

Bobby: I want you to hold it between your knees. Bobby sweeps his arm across the Formica, crashing all the set-ups on the floor. We've all wanted to do that but we never had the balls.

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962)

Lee Marvin, playing the pig-nosed, vicious gunman Liberty Valance, trips restaurant waiter Jimmy Stewart, causing him to drop a steak on the floor. John Wayne (Tom Doniphon) moseys over, squints at Marvin and tells him to pick it up. Marvin tells Stewart to pick it up. Wayne pushes his coattail behind his holster and growls, "That's my steak, Valance." Marvin snaps at Stewart, "Pick it up." Stewart, wanting to avoid violence, kneels to pick it up. Wayne says, "Pilgrim, hold it. I said you, Valance. You pick it up." Marvin, his boys ready for a fight, sneers, "Three against one, Doniphon." Wayne nods: "My boy, Pompey; kitchen door." Pompey (Woody Strode) has his rifle tilted. Another guy says, "I'll get it, Liberty." Wayne kicks the guy in the face and tells Marvin to pick it up. Five seconds goes by, slowly. Marvin bends down and picks up the goddamn steak. Whew.

Animal House (1978)

In the Faber College cafeteria, Bluto (John Belushi) says to the guy across from him, "See if you can guess what I am now." He puts a scoop of mashed potatoes in his mouth, hits his cheeks with his fists, sending the potatoes flying, and says, "I'm a zit. Get it?" Then, food fight. As his sweatshirt in the movie put it so eloquently: college.

The Wrestler (2008)

The fluorescent-lighted sight of over-the-hill wrestler Randy "The Ram" Robinson (Mickey Rourke) behind the supermarket deli counter waiting on a line of customers with idiotic requests, is one of the saddest moments in movies. The Ram, wearing a shower cap and plastic gloves, slicing Boar's Head, cuts his hand and bleeds in front of a nasty woman who wants her cheese sliced just so. He unties his apron, and snarls, "Hey, lady, you want some cheese? Get your own fucking cheese."

Cool Hand Luke (1967)

Lean, lanky Southern work-camp prisoner Luke (Paul Newman) sets up a scam by announcing, "I can eat fifty eggs." Big, hulking Dragline (George Kennedy) says "Nobody can eat fifty eggs," then, knowing the betting to follow, insists Luke can eat fifty eggs in sixty minutes. Luke starts eating eggs, smiling like he's popping M&M's, starts to walk around like a boxer after round nine, finally lies down, his stomach bulging out to there; he's up to forty-nine eggs. The betting continues, Luke starts to choke on the last egg, then, the stakes as high as they're going to go, he swallows the last egg and looks around like he's going to order bacon with a pot of coffee as a chaser.

To Catch a Thief (1955)

American beauty Frances Stevens (Grace Kelly) has been slowly drawing retired cat burglar John Robie (Cary Grant) into her romantic web, taking him for a top speed drive along the Monte Carlo corniche in her sapphire blue, top-down Sunbeam Mark I Alpine. They stop by the side of the road. She's in sheer pink, white gloves. He's wearing a navy blue, polka-dotted ascot. She takes off her gloves, takes out a picnic basket, opens it and, looking him right in the eye, asks, "Do you want a leg or a breast?" For once, Grant almost loses his cool.

Goodfellas (1990)

Where to start? The scene in prison, slicing the garlic so freakin' thin it melts in the pan? Or the one where Henry (Ray Liotta) is racing around town to get away from the Feds, stoned out of his mind, but still has to get home to make the tomato sauce and meatballs? No. It's the scene where Henry, Jimmy (Robert DeNiro) and Tommy (Joe Pesci) go to Tommy's mother's house to get a kitchen knife to carve up a guy in their car trunk but figure they might as well stick around for the spaghetti dinner warmed up by his mom (played by Martin Scorsese's mother) at two in the morning.

Tampopo (1985)

Aside from learning how to slurp noodles without making a sound, you can also learn how to pass a raw egg yolk back and forth to your lover's mouth before it breaks, and how, while wearing a white, three-piece yakuza suit at the beach, to eat an oyster from a beautiful pearl diver's hand.

Diamonds Are Forever (1971)

James Bond always used food and drink as a weapon, either to deflate his opponent's ego, drive "M" to distraction, or, in the case of Diamonds Are Forever, to trick his cabin waiters into revealing they are imposters by telling them he would "have preferred a claret" to the Château Margaux they've brought. When the waiter says the cellar was out of clarets, 007 snaps back, "But Margaux is a claret," revealing the waiters to be assassins, whom he thereupon sets on fire with the flaming kebab skewers and throws overboard.

When Harry Met Sally (1989)

No wonder Jewish guys have shiksa madness. Harry Burns (Billy Crystal) takes Sally Albright (Meg Ryan) for deli at Katz's on the Lower East Side, he gets the pastrami and rye, she orders something and re-arranges the ingredients before convincingly fakes a loud, screaming orgasm just to show Harry women can do it at will. Camera cuts to an older woman at another table (played by director Rob Reiner's mother Estelle), who utters one of the two greatest comedy lines in movie history, "I'll have what she's having." (The other, incidentally, is, "Think you used enough dynamite there, Butch?")

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