James Bond’s Taste In Food And Drink, Part 6: ‘Diamonds Are Forever’

Diamonds Are Ceaselessly (1956) was Ian Fleming’s fourth novel, tailored for the display in 1971, starring Sean Connery after he’d left the sequence after You Solely Reside Twice. Fleming was impressed by a Sunday Occasions story about diamond smuggling, and it gave him the chance to ship 007 to many places the place he had variety of alternatives to wine and dine. 

The e book’s plot entails Bond infiltrating the Spangled Mob smuggling ring in Sierra Leone by impersonating a smuggler himself. There he meets Tiffany Case, a gang member whose hatred for all males is because of being gang raped as a teen. The motion strikes to the U.S. as Bond tracks down Seraffino Spang, head of the gang, at Saratoga Race Observe in upstate New York, the place 007 is advised to wager on a rigged horserace with the intention to get his payment for smuggling in diamonds. Afterwards, he travels to Las Vegas to get his payment, which he obtains in a rigged blackjack sport for which Tiffany Case is the vendor. Spang suspects Bond of being a plant and kidnaps him, bringing him to his personal property named Spectreville, the place Bond is roughed up earlier than he can escape on a

railway push-car, with Spang following on an previous Western prepare. Bond shoots Spang and, with Tiffany, heads for New York to board the RMS Queen Elizabeth. Onboard, two Spang thugs, named Wint and Kidd, seize Tiffany, however Bond rescues her and kills each gangsters. The story then returns to Sierra Leone, the place Bond shuts down the diamond-smuggling pipeline and kills Spang in his helicopter. 

At first of the story, Bond is staying at The Ritz in London and takes his MI6 colleague Invoice Tanner for a lunch of dressed crab and a “pint of black velvet” at Fleming’s favourite restaurant, Scott’s. The pint of black velvet shouldn’t be the model of whiskey by that title however a mixture of stout,  ale and Champagne. 

       Whereas ready to board his BOAC flight to New York from Shannon Airport in Eire, Bond enjoys a steak and Champagne dinner, ending of with Irish espresso, a drink that originated at Foynes Dock, the place in the course of the struggle the seaplanes took off from. The concoction was created by chef Joe Sheridan in 1942 and featured as a promotion for Irish whiskey at Shannon as of 1947. It was launched to the U.S. in 1952 at San Francisco’s Buena Vista Bar.

     In New York Bond dines upstairs with Felix Leiter on the Theater District restaurant Sardi’s, ordering martinis and Nova Scotia salmon that Fleming calls “a poor substitute for the product from Scotland,” adopted by “brizzola” (braciola, Italian beef rolls) made with a California vermouth (“greatest I’ve ever tasted,” says Bond) and half a dressed avocado and espresso. The subsequent day over lunch at ‘21’ Membership on West 52nd Avenue, Tiffany tells him she received’t sleep with him, saying, “It’s going to take greater than Crabmeat Ravigote to get me into mattress.  In any case, because it’s your test, I’m going to have the caviar and what you English name cutlets and a few pink champagne.” The Champagne is a rosé Veuve Clicquot, which they take pleasure in with the veal cutlets, asparagus with sauce mousseline and white stingers (Cognac and white crème de menthe).     

The true life partner-owner of the restaurant, Pete Kriendler, who together with his brother and Charlie Berns opened ‘21’ throughout Prohibition, comes over to greet Tiffany as a daily, and she or he quips that his “little hot-dog stand isn’t doing too badly.” Tiffany does in actual fact decide up the test, inexplicably, however received’t renege on her promise to remain out of Bond’s mattress, later telling him she has by no means slept with a person after the gang rape incident. The subsequent day Bond dines alone at Voisin on Park Avenue, then one among New York’s most luxurious French-Viennese eating places, ordering two vodka martinis, eggs Benedict and strawberries,

Within the subsequent chapter Bond leaves with Leiter for Saratoga, stopping alongside the way in which for a lunch at Rooster within the Basket on the Taconic Parkway, avoiding the “recent mountain trout” that “had spent months in some distant deep-freeze,” as a substitute ordering scrambled eggs with rye toast and iced espresso. In Saratoga he checks into the Sagamore Lodge, primarily based on the unique Pavilion Lodge, in-built 1819, which was probably the most opulent of its time. (There’s a Sagamore Resort on Lake George, however it’s 60 miles from Saratoga Springs.) Bond takes a stroll by way of city and drops into an area spot for 2 bourbons and a $4.50 fried rooster dinner. That night he joins Felix on the Pavilion restaurant within the lodge for a meal of lobsters and martinis made with Cresta Blanca white vermouth. Bond additionally orders a bourbon with “department water,” supposedly very pure water from a stream, which Bond notes shouldn’t be going to be accessible in Las Vegas (though later a Vegas barman assures him he flies in department water usually from Boulder Dam!)

When the motion shifts to Vegas, 007 checks into the fictional Tiara Lodge, ordering poolside a plate of cherrystone clams and a steak. After his escape with Tiffany from Spang, they head for the Beverly Hills Lodge, the well-known “Pink Palace” opened in 1912 for Hollywood trade stars and filmmakers, however they quickly should depart for the airport to fly  in a single day on a Trans-World Airways Tremendous-G Constellation, Flight 93.  Upon arriving in New York, they fortunately board the “nice protected black stomach” of the Queen Elizabeth. 

Tiffany suffers from sea illness, however on the third night time out, Bond meets her for martinis on the Statement Bar, and so they plan to dine on the Verandah Grill. She nonetheless insists the Englishman is after “her household jewels,” as they sip vodka martinis, and she or he asks, “inform me what kind of girl you suppose would add to you.” Bond responds, “Anyone who could make sauce Béarnaise in addition to make love,” inflicting her to ask him to take her to her stateroom. Bond returns to his cabin, there’s a knock on the door, and a waiter brings in a quarter-bottle of Bollinger Champagne, a chafing dish with 4 slices of beef on toast, a small bowl of sauce Béarnaise and a word studying, “This sauce Béarnaise has simply been created by Miss T. Case with none help from me. Signed, The Chef.”

There may be nothing near the variety of food and drinks mentions within the 1971 film of Diamonds Are Ceaselessly, whose plot line differs radically from the novel’s and happens in 1970, with references to the Apollo moon touchdown. Location-wise, Bond meets hustler Loads O’Toole on the Whyte Home, owned by the character Willard Whyte, within the film performed by Jimmy Dean, (filmed at The Riviera, although the lodge façade was really the Las Vegas Worldwide Lodge, later the Hilton). Loads finally ends up thrown into the pool under Bond’s suite by three henchmen.  Bond was staying at The Tropicana however then strikes to Tiffany’s suite at  the Whyte Home.  There are, although, three necessary incidents within the movie involving Bond’s data of wine. 

Within the first, 007 is assembly together with his boss M and Sir Donald Munger to debate the South African smuggling operations. Munger palms Bond a glass of Sherry, however M refuses for “well being causes.” Bond sniffs the Sherry and says, “Too unhealthy about your liver, sir. It’s an unusually wonderful Solera, ‘51, I believe.” M snorts, “There aren’t any years for Sherry, 007,” to which Bond replies, “I used to be talking in regards to the authentic Sherry on which it’s primarily based . . . 1851.” Bond’s snarky comment refers to the truth that Sherries are constituted of a mix of varied batches from a harvest’s barrels stacked in tiers, to be blended with different, older wines. So, Bond is referring to the harvest of 1851, a brandishing of his connoisseurship almost inconceivable for anybody, even within the Sherry commerce, to match.

The second occasion is when Bond, posing as a smuggler, visits Tiffany (Jill St. John) in her flat in Amsterdam, impersonating a smuggler she’s anticipating. Tiffany invitations him to pour himself a drink, and after he pours himself a drink, she takes his glass and says, “I’ll get you some ice,” then out of sight dusts it for fingerprints, not understanding that he has replicated the person whose identification he has assumed with skinny plastic adhesives of his fingerprints supplied by his trustworthy MI6 inventor, Q.

 The final occurred whereas crossing the Atlantic—not on the Elizabeth, which had been taken out of service in 1968, however on the S.S. Canberra, which went into service in 1960 (and later served as a troop ship within the Falklands Struggle of 1982). Two of Spang’s henchmen pose as waiters delivering Bond’s dinner of oysters Andaluz (fried with inexperienced chilies and chorizo), “tidbits of beef” shashlik on burning skewers,  breadsticks, Courvoisier Cognac, wine and a bombe shock, which is, after all, an precise bomb. 

Suspicious of the 2 males, Bond inspects the wine bottle label, a Mouton-Rothschild, and says nonchalantly, “Hmm, for such a grand meal I relatively anticipated a claret,” which is the British time period for a pink Bordeaux.   The villain replies, “Sadly our cellar is poorly stocked with clarets.” Bond says, “However Mouton-Rothschild is a claret,” exposing the person on the idea {that a} wine steward on a luxurious liner would by no means make such a basic mistake, including, “and I’ve smelled that aftershave twice earlier than, and each occasions I smelled a rat.”  

The 2 villains assault Bond. One comes at him with the burning shashlik skewers; Bond smashes the bottle of Cognac and throws the contents at him, inflicting the person to burst into flames. The opposite man Bond flips over the facet of the ship, with the bomb between the person’s legs.