AMC’s hit show Mad Men will debut its much-anticipated second season in a few weeks. The show, set in 1960 in New York City, centers on advertising Exec Don Draper, and is an amazingly stylized glimpse into the lifestyle of the time. A lifestyle that includes smoking, drinking, cheating, eating lots of butter, oh and did we mention smoking, yeah, lots of smoking. We weren’t alive during the 60’s, but we always imagined things like a crystal decanter holding fine scotch, artful ashtrays and cigarette holders lining every coffee table and buffet in the house, and lots of milk. Well, if Mad Men has any accuracy, we weren’t far off.
The food of the show is bland, yet strange. The idea of eating butter with every meal seems like a suicide wish to us now, but then, in the simple days, white bread was healthy and butter and cream actually prevented heart attacks. During the first season, food and drink were mentioned on every episode — so much so that part of the fun was screaming in terror at the meals depicted on the show. In anticipation of the new season beginning, AMC has put up the entire first season for free On Demand. Over the holiday weekend, we went back and watched the whole shebang, taking special note of food and drink. What we found amazed us, simple snacks like saltines and liverwurst, fancy dinners like Goulash and Ribeye in the pan with butter. Tomato juice seemingly flowed from the faucets, and water was a beverage usually passed up for an afternoon tumbler of Jack Daniels. Some favorite food mentions include: table-side Caesar dressing, frozen fishsticks, ham with pineapple, pot roast and ketchup, corned beef and coleslaw (provided as a bit of “local color” for the visiting southern cigarette tycoons), New York style cheesecake, shrimp cocktail, oysters on the halfshell, fig newtons and quite a few ham sandwiches. There was also warm milk, cold milk and milk spiked with vodka. There was whiskey, whiskey with Alka Seltzer, rye, bourbon, scotch, gin, vodka, rum, campari, sambucca, mai tais, white russians, mint juleps, creme de menthe, a bottle of Dom Perignon and enough martinis to kill a horse.
Of course, not everyone on the show can live with this diet and suffer no bad side effects, but for the most part everyone seems so much thinner and more elegant when we look back. Maybe it’s because we can’t smell the ever present cloud in the offices or maybe it is the oh-so-perfect life everyone was trying to achieve, but right now, a ham sandwich would hit the spot.
I love this show to the core of my soul, but I normally get nauseated when I watch it. However, in one episode they were eating chocolate cake while smoking a cigarette and for some strange reason it looked super tasty.
I believe the character said he followed doctor’s orders and ate butter and cream for his ulcer, while ironically increasing his heart attack risk.
Either way, Mad Men is an amazing great show.
I like to picture the swinging mess that Pete will become in the 70s.