The Academy Awards … and restaurants!

This Sunday won’t be a terrific night for many restaurants — at least for the ones patronized by men and women devoted to staying home and watching the annual Academy Awards ceremony.

Sunday night is the airing of the 81st annual award ceremony of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, which first began presenting the familiar gold trophies on May 16, 1929, at a black-tie dinner (yes, there was food in those early days) held in the Blossom Room of the Roosevelt Hotel on Hollywood Boulevard. That night’s menu? Filet of sole saute au beurre and half-broiled chicken on toast.

Over the past 80 years, restaurants have played a role in many films — and performances — that have won Academy Awards.

Kansas City’s Joan Crawford won the Oscar for playing an ambitious waitress-turned-restaurant-owner in the 1945 film Mildred Pierce. Other winning waitresses over the years included Ellen Burstyn for playing a diner waitress in Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore in 1974, Helen Hunt for As Good As It Gets in 1997 and Halle Berry in Monster’s Ball in 2001.

The Best Picture of 1943, Casablanca, is set in a nightclub that serves food. The Best Picture of 1950, All About Eve, has a great scene set in the famous Cub Room of the legendary New York Stork Club. They don’t make dining rooms like that anymore, alas. One of the most famous — and lusty — scenes involving eating is the Best Picture of 1963, Tom Jones. It made a simple meal seem almost pornographic. In 1970, a memorable scene between Jack Nicholson and a waitress was the highlight of Five Easy Pieces — a movie that was nominated for Best Picture but didn’t win. It lost to Patton (in which George C. Scott, who won — and refused — a Best Actor Oscar for his performance in the title role, attends an awkward banquet with Russian military commanders).

Now, what movies or performances connected to the restaurant business am I leaving out?