We all know that kitchens are high-pressure work environments and that if you can’t stand the heat, then you should go sell insurance. You just need to host an overambitious dinner party or try to perfectly time an English breakfast to realise that doing this kind of thing for a living and dealing with the unpredictable demands and personalities of paying customers on top of that is not for the faint-hearted.
Food and meals and even chefs have been part of cinematic output almost since the medium’s invention — after all what’s more of a challenge for a visual medium than trying to capture the wonder of something relying on senses the movies don’t cater for? Traditionally, though, food films have tended to focus on it as a means of social bonding — Babette’s Feast or Eat Drink Man Woman — or as a useful visual metaphor for overindulgence and consumption — The Discreet Charm of the ...