Amuse bouche Thursday (es and es)

Also:

Babette may be the more rewarding film to watch, in part because it affirms that there are times when a single shared meal can have a transformative, even transcendent effect - something we would all like to (and should) believe.  Meanwhile, Big Night takes on the thankless job of reminding us that our most common encounter with hunger is as a recurring debt for which eating provides a reprieve but no permanent solution. 

It’s a less ennobling truth, perhaps, but one we can’t lose sight of. There’s simply nothing more fundamental to our shared humanity than our common need to eat with regularity and a measure of ritual.  I’ll leave you to decide whether the former represents a French approach to the problem of appetite and satisfaction, and the latter the Italian take on it. But it seem to me that neither gives the full picture; each is incomplete without the other.  We need Primo and Babette.