What to eat whilst watching James Bond in `Goldfinger`

05-Dec-2008 • Bond Style

EAT: We were going to watch an early James Bond movie or two, which of course gave us an appetite for '53 Dom Perignon and Beluga caviar. But the Staying-In budget wouldn't cover even an ounce of Beluga, so we settled for the most British dining we could find: The Pub, which opened not quite a year ago at Pembroke Gardens - a report by The Miami Herald.

We started with Goldfinger and classic pub fare -- fish and chips and shepherd's pie, both of them good -- downed with a couple of cold beers. The shepherd's pie filling of ground beef and a bit of ground lamb was mixed with peas, carrots and hard-to-detect bordelaise sauce and topped with whipped potatoes that were jazzed up with mozzarella. The fish and chips were about what you'd expect, a hearty portion of soft, fat fries and battered fish.

On another visit, we tried a panini with smoked turkey, herbed cream cheese and a barely-there smear of cranberry sauce. The sandwich was assembled earlier -- a little sogginess gave it away -- then pressed and heated when ordered. A salad with chicken, dried cranberries, pecans, bleu cheese, mandarin oranges and red onions was a pleasing mix of smooth and crunchy, mild and tangy.

Beyond a few standards, the menu overall is not classic pub fare -- many dishes are accompanied by a fried pickle, for example. And when we watch our next James Bond movie -- Dr. No or Thunderball, both of them set in the Caribbean -- The Pub offers spicy Jamaican jerk shrimp and a Cuban sandwich to set the mood.

DRINK: A real Brit would sip the Whitbread Ale.

WATCH:Goldfinger, classic James Bond, is set largely in the United States, so the Pub Burger -- an old-fashioned American burger (with fried pickle) might have done just as well.