Last night I watched "Chef" (2014) for free with digital credits I had on Amazon Prime. What a wonderful movie I never heard of before, a joyful affirmation. It has fantastic music. In fact I'm looking for a good price on the soundtrack CD, and maybe even I'd like to own the DVD. I love foodie movies, love watching cooking.
The title role is played by the director, Jon Favreau, who also wrote the screenplay.
Carl Caspar is a genius in the kitchen at a well regarded restaurant in an affluent neighborhood. He is inspired by the ingredients he finds at the farmers market, and loves making people happy with food, but the restaurant owner has him straitjacketed to a 10 year old menu, and will not allow creativity. A restaurant critic comes one day, and this is when Chef's miseries really begin. Chef is clueless about social media and how it works, so thinking he's sending a private message to the critic who is grinding him to a pulp, his tweet goes out to the whole world. A great line in the movie, "You know what's the worst thing that ever happened to me? I became a meme. I'm a meme now". The restaurant owner tells Chef that before he does anything else on social media, he (the owner) has to okay it first.
So all this conflict coincides with an offer Chef receives for a good price on a used food truck. He isn't snobbish about food truck cuisine. The dialogue includes his philosophy that food is food, and making it outstanding is the challenge, not being in a foofoo restaurant. The conflicts with the restaurant owner, and his despondency over the public nature of his conversation with the food critic, propel him into a new adventure.
Chef has a great kid who adores him, who appears to be around 9 or 10 years old, and a beautiful ex-wife. You can tell the divorced couple is still in love, not an uncommon thing among divorced people.
So with the kid and the ex-wife he travels to Miami to check out the food truck. His ex-wife, who is from Miami, takes him to places to try the best of Cuban food, and he loves it. He decides to buy the food truck and take Cuba to L.A., but he gets his feet wet while still in Miami. The lines of customers grow longer daily, the till fills up, and happiness ensues. His little boy is a genius on social media, which gives another big boost to his startup. A thing that makes this movie more than just a story is the journey from coast to coast in the food truck, with stops in New Orleans (sister city to Havana), and Austin TX (an early food truck haven). The music soars from start to finish, and at each stop Chef and the truck are working, selling food, tons of it.
I won't spoil the end.
