Foodie Movies

Mouth-watering movies to feast your eyes on.

Chef (2014)

Chef is a foodie feast, written and directed by Jon Favreau who also plays Carl the head chef at the prestigious Gauloises in California. Carl is bored with his job, creating the same old dishes and wants to try new things. Owner Riva (Dustin Hoffman) refuses to allow him. It all comes to a head when a Carl gets into a public spat with a restaurant critic who gives him a poor review and ends up losing his job. So, he buys a food truck and goes on a food journey America. Food has a starring role in this film and we see it being prepared in both a high class restaurant and a truck kitchen. 

BURNT (2015)

Chef Adam Jones (Bradley Cooper) ruins his once-promising career as a chef at a high-class Parisian restaurant through a combination of drug abuse and temper tantrums. To sober up after losing his job and, as penance for his sins, he decides to shuck a million oysters in New Orleans. That done he heads to London to make amends with his former colleagues with varying levels of success. Next, he has to prove himself in the kitchen and win the heart of Helene (Sienna Miller), a sous chef he has fallen for. But just as his life starts moving forward again, his past comes back to haunt him. Restaurant shenanigans galore and plenty of culinary fireworks.

Ratatouille (2007)

In this animated movie, Remy dreams of becoming a renowned chef. The only problem is that he’s a rat in a rodent-phobic industry. In the sewers of Paris, beneath a top class restaurant, he befriends a hapless kitchen boy, Alfredo Linguini, after rushing to fix a soup that Linguini had ruined. The two discover that Remy can manipulate Linguini’s arm movements by pulling on his hair. The two practice cooking and find that they can produce fantastic results. Will these two unlikely friends be able to pull off a gourmet meal that will shoot their restaurant to stardom? Funny and warm, Ratatouille revels in authenticity; the animators consulted with top chefs and even went to culinary school to get the detail right.

Julie & Julia (2009)

Julie & Julia contrasts the early years of chef Julia Child's culinary career with the life of Julie Powell, a young New Yorker who aspires to cook all 524 recipes in Child's cookbook in a year. The film is told in a sequence of flashbacks, alternating between the past and the present, bouncing between different points in Julia and Julie's lives. Julia Child is the wife of a diplomat, living in Paris in 1949, unsure how to spend her days. She tries her at Cordon Bleu cookery classes and discovers her calling. In 2002 in New York, Julie Powell cooks her way through Julia’s recipes. 

The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover (1989)

Peter Greenaway’s masterpiece is as terrifying as it is beautiful. Set mostly in a fantastically opulent restaurant owned by Albert (Sir Michael Gambon) a vicious gangster married to Georgina (Dame Helen Mirren). Repulsed by her husband, Georgina becomes obsessed with another diner and begins a passionate affair. But Albert eventually finds out with terrible consequences. The closing scene requires an exceptionally strong stomach. In among the beautiful dishes, the drama of this movie is hard to forget.