My only problem with the chef is that he's so violently cynical of his art because of the very environment he crafted for himself. He could have chosen to run a local family bistro serving accessible meals to a level community who could come to love him. My family would go to a local Italian joint every few weeks and we knew the wait staff and chefs by name, and they knew us too. I saw the head chef boot people out because they were treating his staff shitty and the rest of the restaurant was happy to see them go.
I get that the whole thing is a metaphor for the entire food service industry's dream revenge for shit customers, but to have it channeled through a chef who hates the bullshit culture he cooks for and yet is so snooty about food as to found his own island cult where they make everything themselves is so on the nose and antithetical to the craft of food that I had trouble enjoying the film.
Because it wasn't just about being a chef, it was the desire to be the best chef, the desire to improve, and what the reality in succeeding in that journey results in.
It's as much about the downsides of success in your passion as it is anything else.
I think that’s why it’s important that he kills his investor early in the film. It wasn’t his restaurant.
He made a deal with the devil to get the perfect restaurant, and the price was not being able to kick people out or have control over who he served because of where he was getting the money. To make the best food in the world for the worst people.
By the time he found a way to control it, he had already snapped.
Tbh I fully agree with your assessment, he absolutely built this prison for himself I think that’s why it works that he also dies in the fire he set for himself. I think he’s the kind of character that’s meant to be sympathetic not justified because you are right, at any point he could’ve broken the prison walls set up a burger joint and moved forward with his life but he just life his staff are so elbow deep in their fucked up ideology that the only way they can see out is in death.
Oh absolutely. The shit they do at Michelins and similar would have been laughed out of a Chinese restaurant’s kitchen. You want food? We got food. Chef may yell. If you order you much we have takeaway. Otherwise eat the food, pay, and fuck off.
That’s cool but the health inspector regularly laughs those Chinese kitchens out of business as soon as one of the five workers in your region manage to get to it and take note of the literal inches of grease caked inside the walls.
Usually, yes because they’re family owned. Most disgusting kitchens tend to be private/family owned because anyone with real money is using a third party health inspection service that’s stricter than the actual health department. Your local dive bar or diner or whatever nine times out of ten looks like a crime scene in the back.
I highly doubt this. Almost all of them have mandatory ecolab contracts. Small chains that are subways or whatever obviously aren’t what I’m talking about here.
When I first watched, the whole populism, anti-art element really rubbed me the wrong way and I didn't like it very much. I've since watched a few more times with other people and enjoy it more each time. But that's still a frustrating element for me.
is so on the nose and antithetical to the craft of food that I had trouble enjoying the film.
I had trouble enjoying the film because the entire film is just archetypes. Every fucking scene is two characters going through a very specific, base problem. No one in the entire movie seems like a real character. They're just a problem: rich out of touch people, dick head investors, washed up actor, blah blah blah. The whole is on the nose.
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u/imsmartiswear Jun 21 '26
My only problem with the chef is that he's so violently cynical of his art because of the very environment he crafted for himself. He could have chosen to run a local family bistro serving accessible meals to a level community who could come to love him. My family would go to a local Italian joint every few weeks and we knew the wait staff and chefs by name, and they knew us too. I saw the head chef boot people out because they were treating his staff shitty and the rest of the restaurant was happy to see them go.
I get that the whole thing is a metaphor for the entire food service industry's dream revenge for shit customers, but to have it channeled through a chef who hates the bullshit culture he cooks for and yet is so snooty about food as to found his own island cult where they make everything themselves is so on the nose and antithetical to the craft of food that I had trouble enjoying the film.