Wednesday, January 8

Food and the City

"I'm sorry. This is worth being fat for." – Miranda describing a glazed Krispy Kreme doughnut

If you asked me to free-associate the HBO hit show "Sex and the City," I would probably mention friendship, Manhattan, and Manolo Blahnik. I would probably not immediately mention food.

I would be remiss.

Watch any episode of "Sex and the City," and you will be treated to a bevy of food delight. Even on a show where the four lead actresses are almost too fabulous-looking to be real, they gotta eat. No matter whether they have to fit into their Dolce & Gabbanas or not.

"Sex in the City" lends itself to particularly interesting foodie analysis, since its fifth lead character is New York City and since its four leading ladies are all incredibly svelte. The four friends – Carrie, Charlotte, Miranda and Samantha – most often meet up at a coffee shop to have breakfast and recount their lives. The rest of the show follows the ladies, singly or in combination, with dates or without, as they shop for shoes, gossip, work, and oh: eat.

Some of the culinary high points so far? Payard Patisserie and Bistro. City Bakery. Nell's. Florent. Cipriani Downtown. Magnolia Bakery (clearly, these girls really love their pastry). Eleven Madison. Takeout food also plays a large part. The four leads are constantly: getting a slice, buying hot dogs at Gray's Papaya, stopping for coffee, buying bags of morning pastries and bagels from H&H Bagels, slurping ice cream from a street stand, or "brown-bagging it" in Central Park.

What interests me about all this eating is threefold. First, the characters clearly eat as a reflection upon themselves: what they eat is supposed to help the audience define each character as compared to the others. Samantha, the racy public-relations guru, rarely seems to eat at all: she has hot water with lemon for breakfast and usually seems to drink her dinner. At breakfast in the coffee shop, Charlotte, straight-laced and proper, has egg-white omelettes and fruit; Carrie, the charmingly quirky friend, eats fries with her coffee. Miranda just seems to eat.

Secondly, it is not infrequently that the writers use food as a focus, the way many real people do. In one episode, Miranda – the high-powered attorney making it in a man's world – is lonely, and so she turns to food. She starts with single eclairs from Payard and ends up eating Duncan Hines devil's food made at home. The point of the story is that the quality of her sweets doesn't matter as much as the quantity, since it's only a substitute for a human relationship in the first place. When Miranda realizes that she's eaten an entire layer cake by herself, she goes back to the safety net provided by her friends.

Finally, what really gets me about this show is that the four main characters seem to be completely adrift in the big City. I can think of one episode where it was acknowledged that one of the women had a family, when Miranda's mother died in Philadelphia (not on the idealized island of Manhattan); some of the boyfriends and husbands have had relatives, but evidently none of the women have siblings or cousins or fathers. They are bound only to each other – and food is their best excuse to get together with their chosen "family." Often that is true even if you do have blood relatives you like to see.

One morning at breakfast in the City, Charlotte asked her friends if they thought that, rather than searching for "the one," they could be each other's soulmates. When she asked that question, I doubt she was eating anything like the southwestern strata in the sidebar; probably only Miranda would venture into this much dairy. I highly recommend it, though – you can make it in the evening and refrigerate for an easy Sunday morning breakfast with whomever you choose.