Mystic Pizza

The secret sauce is never revealed — on screen or off. Leona (Conchata Ferrell) tells her waitresses the recipe traces back to spices "from the Algarve, back in Portugal," passed down from her grandfather to her father to her. What's actually in it stays a mystery through the whole film, and the three friends are still wondering about it in the closing scene. The real Mystic Pizza restaurant that inspired the film — still open at 56 West Main Street in Mystic, Connecticut — keeps its own sauce recipe just as guarded.

"Fireside Gourmet" is a fictional TV critic, not a real column or show — a small, recurring bit of comic tension is built around waiting for his review to air.

The dentures gag. A regular customer keeps leaving his dentures in his water glass; Kat is disgusted by it every time, and it's exactly the water glass the food critic gets served from when he visits.

A launching pad for its cast. This was Julia Roberts's first starring role and Matt Damon's first theatrical film appearance (as Charlie Windsor's teenage brother, in a single dinner-table scene).

The "designer pizza" Kat never makes. At one point Kat jokes about upgrading the menu with "a little dry white wine, some smoked clams, sun-dried tomatoes" — a dig at a snooty review the girls just read. It's a punchline about pretension, not a dish anyone in the film actually cooks.