No popcorn? Here’s the perfect cinema feasting menu

I have a controversial announcement to make: popcorn is severely overrated.

There, I said it. I’m sorry. I much prefer a more — trigger warning — substantial meal. A smoked salmon bagel and a bag of Rococo praline eggs snuck into the cinema under my biggest coat, or a litre of ramen if horizontal on the sofa at home. Now, however, I’ve discovered an even better way to scoff during screenings: eating what’s in the film.

The beautifully executed Cooking with Scorsese and Others Presents: The Cookbook, by Hato Press, calls on some of the world’s finest chefs to recreate dishes seen in 46 cinema classics, from Martin Brest’s Scent of a Woman to Jonathan Demme’s The Silence of the Lambs. Seven years in the making, the book began when ‘the Hato team started researching the daily rituals of creatives’, says Kenjiro Kirton, Hato ‘s co-founder. This morphed into a cookbook project when ‘we began to see how directors use food to express emotion’.

Each recipe is accompanied by an essay. Jeremy Lee talks of his fondness of the quiche Lorraine in Hitchcock’s How to Catch a Thief, while Brett Redman of Elliot’s presents grilled peach, elderflower cream, raspberries and sour caramel, inspired by Luca Guadagnino’s saucy Call Me by Your Name. Now to find a coat with big enough pockets…