The famous last line of Billy Wilder’s The Apartment, winner of the 1961 Academy Award for Best Picture and Best Screenplay, punctuates a game of gin rummy between Fran Kubelik (Shirley MacLaine) and C. C. “Bud” Baxter (Jack Lemmon):

                          BUD
            I love you, Miss Kubelik.

                         FRAN
                   (cutting a card)
            Seven --
                   (looking at Bud's card)
            -- queen.

She hands the deck to Bud.

                         BUD
            Did you hear what I said, Miss
            Kubelik? I absolutely adore you.

                         FRAN
                   (smiling)
            Shut up and deal!

Although Wilder and screenwriting partner I.A.L. Diamond employed that classic retort to splash some vinegar on what could have been a syrupy ending, it was an earlier line where they left the sentimentality intact that made a more lasting impression on me. Cooking dinner for Fran in the cramped kitchen of his Manhattan apartment, Bud sings operatically as he merrily strains spaghetti with the strings of a tennis racquet.

                         BUD
            You know, I used to live like
            Robinson Crusoe -- shipwrecked
            among eight million people. Then
            one day I saw a footprint in the
            sand -- and there you were --
                   (hands her martini)
            It's a wonderful thing -- dinner
            for two.

It’s a wonderful thing, dinner for two. I’d like to think that with those seven words, Wilder and Diamond informed my approach to food writing more than any restaurant critic or culinary scholar.  Because beyond dissecting the qualities of the dining experience and critiquing the nitty-gritty of a chef’s accomplishment or a restaurateur’s vision, the mere fact of dinner for two is a wonderful thing.

And so, when Mario Cacciottolo (@marioSOTM on twitter) asked me to choose something important I had heard in my life to put on his Someone Once Told me (SOTM) website I immediately served him a winner from the tennis racquet of CC “Bud” Baxter.