Arena — Season 1, Episode 387: Food Night: Great Moments in Food History
Documentary • 90 min • 3 seasons, 689 episodes • ★ 7.2/10
Episode synopsis
A salute to four great thinkers. If Rossini had not preferred food to music there would have been no Tornados Rossini. If Nellie Melba had not become so fat through eating too many of the Peach Melbas created for her by Escoffier, he would not have had to remedy the situation by inventing Melba Toast. If he hadn't lost his all on that last turn of the cards, would the Earl of Sandwich have found inspiration for a snack? Today, would a champion of the people like Garibaldi have to share the honours with a biscuit called the 'Mandela'? Bernard Bresslaw, aided by David Troughton and Christopher Ryan, brings these food heroes to life.
About Arena
Arena is a British television documentary series, made and broadcast by the BBC. Voted by leading TV executives in Broadcast as one of the top 50 most influential programmes of all time, it has run since 1 October 1975 with over five hundred episodes made, directed by the likes of Martin Scorsese, Alan Yentob, Roly Keating, Frederick Baker, Volker Schlondorff and Vikram Jayanti. Arena's subjects are a roll-call of the world's best known cultural figures from the 20th and 21st centuries, from singers Bob Dylan and Amy Winehouse to academics Edward Said and Eric Hobsbawm, from writers Jean Genet and V S Naipaul to artists Francis Bacon and Louise Bourgeois. The current series editor is Anthony Wall.