The Bracebridge Dinner at the Ahwahnee Hotel serves modern gourmet food, but with a slight nod to the Renaissance in how it is labelled. Sookie’s menu seems to resemble it very closely.
Soup – Butternut squash (pumpkin) soup topped with cream (?) and rosemary
Fish – Trout
Peacock Pie – not really peacock, usually duck, capon, or quail, or even small game like rabbit. It’s usually a breast fillet wrapped in pastry.
Baron of Beef – a mostly British term for what is otherwise known as a top sirloin roast (a double sirloin). The Ahwahnee seems to serve instead a beef steak of superior cut, and so does Sookie.
Salad – usually with some sort of festive addition, such as cranberries and walnuts
Plum Pudding – prune tart (Martha Stewart has a recipe for this, perhaps Sookie used it?)
Wassail – a traditional hot mulled punch, made with spiced apple cider
LORELAI: For the Bracebridge Dinner. JACKSON: Geez, you guys are going crazy with this dinner. SOOKIE: Jackson, I told you, this dinner is not just about food. We are recreating an authentic 19th century meal. LORELAI: The servers are all gonna be in period clothing, they’re gonna speak period English. Here, look at the costumes.
The Bracebridge Dinner is an annual tradition which has been held at the Ahwahnee Hotel in Yosemite National Park, California since 1927, when the hotel opened. The interior of the Ahwahnee was an inspiration for the hotel in Stanley Kubrick’s film, The Shining – a hint as to how Lorelai may have become interested in holding her own Bracebridge Dinner.
The Bracebridge Dinner is a seven-course formal gathering held in the Grand Dining Room and presented as a feast given by a Renaissance-era lord. It was inspired by the fictional Squire Bracebridge’s Yule celebration in a story from the 1820 work, The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent., by American author Washington Irving. Music and theatrical performances based on Irving’s story accompany the introduction of each course.
Tickets to the Bracebridge Dinner cost around $400 and are generally difficult to obtain, sometimes being awarded in a lottery system. In 1992, there were 60 000 applicants for the 1650 seats available. This could be the reason why the Trelling Paper Company from Chicago have decided to hold their own Bracebridge Dinner at the Independence Inn.
Sookie says they will be serving an authentic 19th century meal, but in fact it is a Renaissance-themed meal. There’s not that much authentic about the dinner really, however I’m pretty sure the 19th century one wasn’t either. It’s a bit of fun and frolic, not a history lesson.
SOOKIE: You’ve got all the mushrooms? … The shiitake, the nameko, the chanterelle? The matsutake? The makeniya?
Shiitake: an East Asian mushroom commonly used in Chinese and Japanese cusisine, especially vegetarian dishes.
Nameko: a small amber-brown mushroom, very popular in both Japan and Russia for cooking. In America, sometimes called “butterscotch mushroom”.
Chanterelle [pictured]: one of the most popular of wild edible fungi, meaty and funnel-shaped with forked folds. They have a fruity aroma, rather like apricot, and a mildly peppery taste. There are several species native to North America.
Matsutake: a rare and luxurious mushroom which grows in East Asia, Europe, and North America. It has a distinctive odour that many find unpleasant, but is greatly prized in Japanese cuisine.
Makeniya: a mushroom variety that Sookie made up to test Jackson. He passed!
RUNE: I thought an alarm would go off like in The Thomas Crown Affair.
The Thomas Crown Affair, a 1999 romantic thriller that is a remake of the 1968 film of the same name (in the earlier version, paintings are not involved). It stars Pierce Brosnan as Thomas Crown, a billionaire who steals a painting from the Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York, and takes part in a game of cat and mouse with the insurance agent who is investigating him, played by Rene Russo. Faye Dunaway plays Crown’s therapist – in the original version, she was the pursuing insurance agent. The film was successful and well-reviewed.
Mexican jumping beans are not really beans, but seed pods of the plant Sebastiana pavonia, native to Mexico and Costa Rica. The seeds can become inhabited by the larva of a small moth, and if it becomes warm, it will move to eat, causing the seed to “jump”. Holding one in your hand will warm it to the point it becomes quite lively. They are sold as children’s novelty items in the US, and it is common to say that an excitable child is hopping about “like a Mexican jumping bean” .
MICHEL: [on phone] Yes, you can rent a car in Manhattan and return it in Hartford. That’s … that’s no problem, sir. Yes. Yes, you can return it to Bradley International. That’s … that’s very convenient.
Bradley International Airport is in the town of Windsor Locks, about fifteen minutes drive north of Hartford. Originally a World War II military airfield, it opened as a civilian international airport in 1947. It’s the major airport for the Hartford region, and the one that the characters all presumably use when they need to catch a flight anywhere.
Lorelai is referring to the Ernest film franchise, starring Jim Varney as a well-meaning simpleton named Ernest P. Worrell. The films came out of a series of advertisements in the 1980s, which then became a television sketch show, then a series of low-budget films, beginning with Ernest Goes to Camp in 1987, and ending with Ernest in the Army in 1998 (by this stage, the films were going direct to video). The films were not critically well-received, but quite profitable.
Although Ernest doesn’t seem to have built a snowman, he did have a winter-themed outing in Ernest Saves Christmas (1988), generally considered one of the best of the Ernest films.
RORY: We’re competing against the Michelangelo of snow.
Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni, known by his first name (1475-1564), Italian Renaissance sculptor and painter of unparalleled influence on Western art, often described as the greatest artist of his age, and sometimes as the greatest of all time. His best-known sculptures are the Pietà, and David, and he is famous for painting the Sistine Chapel in Rome.
RORY: Paris wants the first issue back to be a double issue, so we have to prep over break and she says the news never sleeps. LORELAI: What about Paris, does she ever sleep? RORY: I think she periodically makes a whirring noise and then just shuts down.
Paris is an extremely hard-working, driven, and passionate editor of the school newspaper – and she doesn’t even want to be a journalist. It would be nice to see Rory show some of this enthusiasm for her chosen future profession. Without Paris, how much would Rory even care about the paper?
I think it’s meant to show us that Paris is an overly demanding lunatic with no life, while Rory is rational and relaxed about life-work balance. However, it just makes it seem as if Rory isn’t that interested, and is willing to let Paris set the pace for her.
RORY: Oh, we have to rent Godfather 3 on DVD. LORELAI: You’re kidding. RORY: In the audio commentary, Coppola actually defends casting Sofia.
The Godfather Part III, the 1990 crime film that is the third of the Godfather films, previously discussed. Although packaged as a trilogy, director Francis Ford Coppola himself considers the first two films a duology, and the third film as their sequel.
The film was a commercial success and received positive reviews, although it is generally regarded as a lesser work than the first two. Critics praised Al Pacino and the screenplay, but criticised the convoluted plot, and Sofia Coppola’s performance as Mary Corleone, Michael’s daughter. It is the only film in the franchise not to win any major awards, while Sofia Coppola received two Razzies for Worst Supporting Actress and Worst New Star.
Francis Ford Coppola answered his critics by writing a letter to the New York Times in 1991, and in several interviews. Sofia was not his first choice for the role, but Winona Ryder had arrived late on set so exhausted from filming Mermaids that doctors advised she be sent home to recover. With no other suitable actresses, and filming already delayed by Ryder, he decided to cast Sofia as she was the perfect age and already knew the script. Furthermore, he had originally based the character of Mary on Sofia.
In 2019 while promoting the 2020 director’s cut of the film, Francis Ford Coppola insisted that Sofia may not have been a professional actress, but she was beautiful, touching, and authentic. His defence of his daughter has remained ongoing and heartfelt – way more than just one remark on the DVD audio commentary.
It’s interesting that in an episode where Lorelai hears from Christopher, hoping to see Rory, it opens with a mention of a Godfather film, and a fond father. Not only that, it is Rory who wants to watch the film specifically so she can listen to the audio commentary of Coppola’s defence of his daughter Sofia.
The Annotated Gilmore Girls 