Most times in this blog I would never try to spoil a movie for anyone. In this case I am sorry to admit that it is riddled with spoilers. I recently had to complete a paper for a Film Studies class about the use of food in the movie Chef. This is an abridged version of that paper. Give it a look.
Warning!! Spoilers ahead!
Here is the trailer!
Cookin’ Up the Feels with Chef
Films have the uncanny ability to make us feel powerful things. They can make us laugh. They can make us cry. They can make us feel for people we never thought we never before thought existed. They can make our favorite characters come to life. Watching strangers pretend to be different people somehow has the ability to make even the most hard person come alive with emotion. In Chef (Jon Favreau, 2014), we see the story of a man reconnect with his life after divorce, losing his job and starting a new business. Food acts as a catalyst for many features of the film. Food takes the place of sex between coworkers, it represents change through having to adapt and it represents connectivity with people. Jon Favreau brought to the screen a late-in-life, coming-of-age tale that is dominated through Cuban inspired foods.
Chef follows the story of a chef after he loses his restaurant and takes time to start his own business and get closer to his family. Food throughout is a catalyst facilitating communication, admiration, and reconciliation. After a bad review of the restaurant where chef Carl Casper (Jon Favreau) works, he challenges the food critic to come eat there again with a new menu. The owner of the restaurant forces him to use the same menu which causes the chef to meltdown both in person and on social media. Chef Casper tries to escape the social media buzz by going to Florida with son Percy (Emjay Anthony) and his ex wife Inez (Sofia Vergara). While in Florida his ex wife convinces him to meet with her first husband Marvin (Robert Downey Jr.) about buying a food truck that he can use to cook his own menu on his own time. To help run the truck, Casper hires his friend Martin (John Leguizamo). The two employ Percy to help them work their way across the country to get back home to California.
Eating Instead of Sex
Food can take the place of many things in film. In Japanese culture, sex scenes in film are so highly censored that in some films food will represent sexual acts between two people. This is no different in Chef. Throughout the first act of the movie Chef Carl Casper hosts an odd sort of affair with the hostess at his restaurant, Molly (Scarlett Johansson). It is apparent through dialogue that the two have been or were close to having a sexual relationship in the past but are currently trying to not get attached. This could be because of a myriad of reasons including Casper’s family life, the age difference between the two, or simply trying not to mix work and pleasure.
At a particularly rough time for Chef Casper he is seen outside the restaurant smoking a joint with Molly. The two are discussing a bad review that Casper just received and as Molly is consoling him the situation becomes sexually charged. Molly says, “We both agreed not to do this.” To which Casper responds, “I know, but why don’t I just cook you something?” Molly: “Okay, fuck it. Let’s go.” The scene cuts to a montage of shots where Casper is making Molly a pasta dish as she wait for it on his bed. Molly is laying in a sensual position with a shirt that she was not wearing previously hanging off one shoulder, exposing her bra strap. When Casper gives her the dish to try she moans in a most sensual way.
“One’s relationship with food thus involves physical, emotional, and psychological aspects.” (Crouch, 1) Chef Casper uses his food in this scene as a way to be intimate with his coworker Molly. Whether they had sex or not is not outwardly said but the change in clothing hints at it. The food being made is a carbohydrate full, but still healthy meal. Many people indulge in carbohydrates just before or just after an activity that requires a lot of energy. Regardless, instead of showing the act of these two friends making love, a scene full of chopping, sautéing, stirring and mixing is shown, followed by a glimpse of extreme pleasure from the female in the interaction as the male goes to clean up the mess that was made in his kitchen.
Later in the film an emotional connection is made with Casper’s ex wife Inez, but the connection could be regarded as a sexual reference. The family is in Miami to watch Casper’s former father in-law at a Cuban night club. After the show the group goes out for food at Versailles, a restaurant famous for Cuban cuisine. Casper wants to wake Percy up to try an authentic Cuban sandwich but Inez prevents him from doing so. Casper: “This is really good by the way.” Inez: “Yours are way better.” The dialogue leaves a lot to the imagination but the cinematography shows the point trying to be made. As the camera lingers on Inez after she says the line a slight smile appears on her lips. This is because of two things. The first is that Inez has bolstered his confidence in a way that reverts back to inherit traits. Every chef is reverent towards their food, acknowledging others when their food is good but deep down wanting their food to be better. The sandwiches throughout the film are long, round and phallic. By Inez saying that his sandwiches are better, it is also alluding to an innate desire of males penis envy of other males, or in this case, the chefs envy of other chefs. The second reason is because Inez wants Casper to buy a food truck, something she believes will be a positive change in his life. Her comment has it’s desired effect: the next line is from Casper asking about her first husband that would have access to a food truck.
Food Inspiring Change
Change in Chef is catalyzed by food. Casper was once a major player among the chefs of Miami. Now he has become complacent in his role as the head chef of an upper-middle class establishment in California. This upsets two people for two different reasons: a food critic that pulled for Casper in his early days, and the owner of the restaurant that only wants to fill the tables and does not care about experimenting with new dishes to bring new food to a new audience of diners.
“Personalization also applies to the way we think about common foods. While the Oreo may be a highly predictable ‘cash cow’ for Nabisco…for the individual consumer it may evoke acutely poignant childhood [memories].” (Belasco, 24) This quote sums up how the food critic, Ramsey Michel (Oliver Platt), reacts to Casper’s food that he tries in the beginning of the film. The food inspired him to create a horribly personal review. The review is brutal:
“Over the last decade Carl Casper has somehow managed to transform himself from the edgiest chef in Miami to the needy aunt that gives you $5 every time you see her in hopes that you will like her, but instead causes you to try and escape from her cloying embrace that threatens to smother you in her saggy, moist cleavage. Carl Casper can best be summed up by the first bite of his needy and yet by some miracle also irrelevant, chocolate lava cake. Casper didn’t even have the courage to undercook the cake, thus curiously lacking it’s molten lava center. This sad dessert is emblematic of Carl Casper’s disappointing new chapter.”
Casper is enraged by this review and has his son create a Twitter account for him which he uses to call out the critic. The critic retorts and Casper responds with a challenge to come eat a new menu at the restaurant created just for him. Unfortunately the new menu ideas are shut down by the restaurant’s owner.
In “Creative Eating: The Oreo Syndrome” by Elizabeth M. Adler, it is claimed that people ritualize the ways they eat their food. Casper strives to make his mark on the world by updating the menu with new and different foods. Instead of the foods succeeding, his ideas are constantly shut down by the restaurant’s owner Riva (Dustin Hoffman) based on a dish that nobody ordered years ago, the dreaded sweetbreads. The two have two large arguments in the film, the second of which results in Casper quitting from the restaurant and his sous-chef being promoted to head chef on the night of the challenge with the critic.
Casper goes home with all of the ingredients he would have used to make the meal for Michel. In a set of interspersed shots we see that Chef Casper is in his own kitchen at home creating the meal he would have made while Michel is at the restaurant being served the exact same meal as before. When Michel tweets at him, Casper flies into a fury. He arrives at the restaurant in time to yell at Michel and bastardize the food with his hands, explaining how chocolate lava cake is not undercooked but made with ganache that melts while baked. The fight goes viral on social media and all of Casper’s potential jobs dry up. He is forced to make a big change and buy a food truck that he takes across the country with his son.
Food as Connectivity
Perhaps the most enthralling relationship in the film is between Chef Carl Casper and his son Percy. Casper and his wife Inez are separated and their son Percy is forced to split his time between his parents. To make the best of his little time with Percy he takes him to street fairs, farmers markets and movies. Nearly every time Casper picks Percy up for their days together he is late or in a hurry so he needs to drop off Percy earlier than normal. Every scene with Percy and Casper revolves around food. If they themselves are not eating then they are cooking or watching people eat. Percy is not seen without some sort of food or his cell phone in his hand; sometimes both food and the phone are in his hands.
The redemption of Casper’s relationship with his son comes when he first purchases the food truck from Marvin. While the pair work to clean the disgusting truck they get in a fight over Casper treating Percy like an employee instead of a son. Casper talks to Percy about becoming a chef and the trials of working on a truck like theirs. He buys Percy his own chef knife that symbolizes the bond they share as father and son, making food together. Before the truck is finished, Casper’s friend Marvin shows up to work for him. They finish the truck with the help of some of Marvin’s Hispanic workers and make them a Cuban inspired meal. They then decide to bring the truck back to California on a road trip, making different foods with locally sourced ingredients on their way back west.
“The mobile food trucks change their location from day to day, and often within that day…Twitter allows the vendor to tweet their latest location as well as daily specials, promotions, and last minute menu changes.” (Caldwell, 308) Percy unveils to his two middle-aged coworkers that Twitter and social media are creating a huge buzz for the food truck, called “El Jefe.” . The new way of internet marketing is the way of the future seen throughout the film being pushed by Casper’s son, Percy. Percy’s work is discovered when the crew is in New Orleans making up for a failed promise. During one of Casper and Percy’s outing they agreed to go have authentic beignets at Cafe Dumont in New Orleans, Louisiana. Casper had to put off the trip because of the Twitter scandal. To make it up to Percy, Casper ignores the truck for a few hours to show his son the city. When they get back to the truck a huge line is waiting because of a picture that Percy tweeted. Casper and Martin make Percy the head of marketing because of his work and it allows them to bond together.
A big part of the trip is taking local ingredients from places they stop and combining them with their Cuban inspired food. Most of the dishes are just modified sandwiches, like barbecue brisket sandwiches in Austin, Texas. In “Cuban American Food” an article for the Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America by Andrew F. Smith, the idea of a food that is the product of a mating between Cuban and American dishes is discussed. The created food does not lose its combined heritage but instead doubles the market of consumers interested in trying something new. The food provides a means for Chef Casper to bond with his son, who is half Cuban on his mother’s side (played by Sophia Vergara who is actually Colombian) and half American-English on his father’s side.
Food is the most dynamic medium to a chef. So it only makes sense that in this film, the food is the main dynamic medium. Food brought Chef Carl Casper to the forefront of the culinary market. Food broke and then repaired Carl Casper’s career. Food brought Casper’s family back together. With a medium to work with that is as versatile as food, it is not surprising that this film took the Indie film world by storm. In the words of the writer and director himself, “A large part of being a chef is to treat the food, your art, with reverence. So that is what we sought to do, from the beginning of the film to the end.” (Travers)
Works Cited:
Adler, Elizabeth M. “Creative Eating: The Oreo Syndrome.” Western States Folklore Society. 1981. pp. 4-10. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1499843. Web. 3 March 2016.
Caldwell, Alison. 2012. “Will Tweet for Food: Microblogging Mobile Food Trucks—Online, Offline, and In Line.” Taking Food Public: Redefining Foodways in a Changing World. 2012. pp. 306-321. New York: Routledge. Web. 3 March 2016.
Smith, Andrew F. “Cuban American Food.” The Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America (2004). Oxford Reference. Web. 3 March 2016.
Belasco, Warren. 2008. Food: The Key Concepts. Berg. Web. 3 March, 2016. Chapter Two, Identity: Are We What We Eat?
“Popcorn with Peter Travers: Jon Favreau.” Interview by Peter Travers. ABC Nightly News 2 May 2015. Print.
Crouch, Margaret A. “Food Worlds, Film, and Gender.” Encyclopedia of Food and Agricultural Ethics (2014): 1-2. Eastern Michigan University. Web. 10 Apr. 2016.
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