LAFeature
Oscar Movie Pairings: Nomadland + Apple Pan
What to eat while you watch Frances McDormand’s performance of the year.
Streaming on Hulu
In Nomadland, a woman named Fern played by Frances McDormand loses everything in the Great Recession. Her husband, her job, her house, and her community. She scrapes together whatever she has left, buys a camper van, makes it home, and sets out on the open road, taking odd jobs and making friends along the way. Unlike Frances’s character, these “friends” are not actors, but real-life American nomads who play themselves, and share their own personal stories of loss and hope. But Fern never gets too close or lingers too long in one place. Both her sister and a fellow nomad offer her a roof, but she’s self-sufficient and untrusting, as is the American way. Her life is an eternal road trip, and the eternal road trip meal that you should order / cry into while you watch is none other than a burger, which does make an appearance in the movie. Order Apple Pan’s hickory burger, a wax paper-wrapped nod to roadside burger.
photo credit: Holly Liss
