🎬 Storyline

Chef (2014)

Chef Carl Casper is the head chef at Gauloise located in California. He ran the kitchen with a great staff. Chef Carl comes upon a special day, a food critic, Ramsey Michel, is coming to critique his food. Chef Carl is super excited and buys special foods to make for the day of his food critique. The owner of the restaurant pushed Carl to not do anything special and to still to the basics, the things he’s cooked and had on the menu for years. Carl gets upset because he had new specialties planned, but he obeys his boss and sticks to the same old foods. Carl is so busy with his job he doesn’t take too much time to grow a good relationship with his son, Percy. Ramsey comes to taste the food prepared for him. The next day a not so good critique was posted on Ramsey’s blog. Carl is devastated and angered at the critique so he tweets an insulting tweet at Ramsey. He didn’t realize he has tweeted publicly, he thought he was sending a private message directly to the food critic. Over one night Carl gains a huge following and eventually tweets to Ramsey for a “rematch.” A do over so that Carl can serve the food he was going to in the first place. Once again, Carl’s boss turns him down and wants him to make the exact same thing that the critic ate the first time. Carl quits and walks out on the spot leaving his other kitchen co-workers to take over the rematch. After the second time of eating the same exact food, Ramsey starts tweeting bad about how chef Carl quit. Carl angrily enters the restaurant and public berates Ramsey. Chef Carl, now out of a job, gets to spend time with his son. His ex-wife asks him to go on a work trip with her to Miami. Asks him to come along and help take care of Percy while she’s working. Carl eventually agrees to go. While in Miami Carl rediscovers his love for Cuban food and decides to open a food truck. Martin, Carl’s friend from Gauloise, decides not to accept a promotion to come help Carl run this new food truck. Over the summer, Carl, his son Percy, and Martin stop at different places serving top quality Cuban sandwiches while traveling back home. Percy promotes the food truck on social media which gets them a lot of business. This trip has allowed Carl to find his passion in cooking again, but to also create a lasting relationship with his son. Percy loves spending time with his dad and learning the ways of cooking so much that he offers to work on the truck during the holidays and weekends while in school. Ramsey secretly tries chef Carl’s food from his food truck and falls in love. They patch up their relationship and become partners. Ramsey wants Carl to open a restaurant based off of his food truck. The restaurant successfully opens. In the end, one of the first celebrations at the restaurant is chef Carl and his ex-wife getting remarried to rejoin their happy family.

Settings: Fancy restaurant, Chef Carl’s apartment, Ex-wife’s house, the Food Truck, El Jefe restaurant

(Kowalsky, 2014)

🎬 Role of Food in Film 

Food plays an important role in this film. The main character is a chef which means he’s constantly around food. Chef Carl loves making food. At the beginning of the film food is presented in a very sophisticated way at a very fancy restaurant. The plates are big and the portions are small. A fine dining like restaurant. Food seems to be what carries the movie. There are different scenes where chef Carl is making food at his apartment and he puts so much passion into making each dish and making it perfectly. He gets reunited with Cuban food when he’s back in Miami with his ex-wife and son. Cuban food is what brings him to getting a food truck. He wants to bring that type of food back to where he lives. While traveling home the El Jefe food truck becomes very popular for what they serve. It even grabs the taste buds of the food critic that once tore Carl down. The El Jefe food truck then becomes a restaurant. The plot of the movie involves a lot of food and the passion about the food.

(Garrett, 2014)

🎬 Film & Class Connections

 I chose to focus on three themes in the film that we learned about in class. Gender and gender roles, social class status, and ethnic identities or ethnic foods. I think the Chef does a decent job at portraying all three of these themes at different times throughout the film.

GENDER / GENDER ROLES

Today’s society is good at placing certain roles on one specific gender. Sometimes individuals are looked at differently if they’re completing a task that is mainly done by the other gender. For example, men are typically looked at to go to work and bring home the money, to do the yard work or dirty work around the house, or even when it comes to food they’re more likely to cook. Women are supposed to tidy up the house, clean, take care of the kids, do the laundry, keep the family on track. Simple tasks if you will compared to the rough tasks that society puts on men. This movie plays on different gender roles. Some that society would think are okay and others not so much. Chef Carl is the head chef in a fancy kitchen, he’s in charge. Most of the time when we think about head chef’s we do picture a male because that position needs to be someone who is tough and able to manage and deal with a lot of stress. On top of that, most of the kitchen staff in this film are men. I believe there are only 2 or 3 females working in the kitchen. At a restaurant most females are waitresses or hostesses. (10:24) There are a few scenes that come up where drinking is involved. One scene is where chef Carl reads his critic from the food critic. All the men are gathered around and being served drinks by women. The men having a good time while women are serving them is something society would probably approve. (13:22) The movie has Carl’s ex-wife owning a really nice, expensive house compared to his one room apartment and she has a lot ow workers that work for her. Meaning that she’s successful and has a decent amount of money especially when she offers to take Carl on the trip to Miami with her. (16:16) The head chef, the food critic, the owner of the fancy restaurant, they’re all males playing leadership roles.

SOCIAL CLASS STATUS

We identify different foods to different social class levels. Keeping it simple there’s roughly a lower, middle, and upper class. Each of these classes seems to have different food tagged with them. Cultural capital can also be wrapped up in these thoughts. Cultural capital being the social skills, manners, and tastes in each of the different classes. For example, most people in the upper class probably often have meals that serve foods considered fancy. Whereas the lower class might be seen scarfing down tacos or something super simple that’s cheap and can be found almost anywhere. I would say this film portrays different social classes. At the beginning, the film starts out at a fancy restaurant. This restaurant has nice menus, nice seating, it’s one where people have to dress up to attend and they book up quickly with reservations. (18:53) Also, the food portions are small in comparison to the dishes they’re served in. His ex-wife, as talked about in the previous theme, has a lot of money. She wears nice clothes and heels, has multiple workers working at her house for her, and she has a publicist. (51:14) When chef Carl gets this food truck it would seem that social class status switches and leaves the upper class. He’s on this food truck trying to make traditional Cuban food and that’s all he cares about. Him, Martin, and his son road trip back home on the truck. While doing this they basically live in this truck for days. They barely have any luggage. This is something that most people in the upper class probably wouldn’t do. (1:25:14) Higher class social skills, manners, and tastes differ from those who are in other classes.

ETHNIC IDENTITIES / ETHNIC FOODS

There are different ethnic identities in this film along with different ethnic foods. Chef Carl is American. His wife is Hispanic and so is his co-worker Martin. The food at the beginning of the movie is very high-class American food, but at the end of the movie the food switches to authentic Cuban food. Chef Carl is a good example of cultural tourism. Someone who enjoys food from other cultures. Chef Carl starts out making American food, but when he takes the trip to Miami with his ex-wife and son he falls back in love with Cuban food and decides that’s what he wants to make for his food truck. Something different from what he had been making. There’s a scene in Miami where Carl, his ex-wife, and son are all dancing to Spanish music being played and they’re all smiling and enjoying the moment. (54:38) His Cuban food truck eventually becomes so popular that it gets made into a restaurant still sticking to the same authentic, Cuban foods. (1:47:48).

🎬 Personal Opinion

I think Chef was an enjoyable movie. It was an easy plot to follow and it involved food so who wouldn’t want to watch it? Chef Carl was so passionate about food that it made other people passionate about food too. He took food that wasn’t part of his culture and shared and served it to others. He grew his new business from the ground up. I think the film was good at portraying the themes listed above along with other  life lesson themes that we haven’t learned about in class. Such as the importance of family and relationships, to follow your dreams, and to never give up. Food is what brought this broken family back together. I wouldn’t say the film had many weaknesses.

CARL CASPER: “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 five dollars every time you see her in hopes that you will like her, but instead causes you to shrink from her cloying embrace which threatens to smother you in her saggy, moist cleavage. The signature app, intended to impress the country club brunch crowd, is the caviar egg. A shirred egg topped with a dollop of caviar is an excuse for the chef to overcharge us for his insecurity and lack of imagination. Carl Casper can be best 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 its signature molten center. This sad dessert is emblematic of Carl Casper’s disappointing new chapter. His dramatic… weight gain can only be explained by the fact that he must be eating all the… food sent back to the kitchen. Two stars.” (13:22) This is the scene where chef Carl is reading Ramsey Michel’s critic about his food.

CARL CASPER: “I may not do everything great in my life, but I’m good at this. I manage to touch people’s lives with what I do and I want to share that with you.” (1:14:24) This is the scene where Carl is teaching his son how to cook on the food truck and having him learn about his passion for food.

(Solomon, 2014)

🎬 References

Favreau, J. (Producer), & Bespalov, S. (Producer) & Favreau, J. (Director). (2014). Chef [Motion
Picture]. United States: Los Angeles Studios.

Garrett, J. (2014, September 08). CHEF: What Model Food Truck Was That? Retrieved April 27, 2019, from https://jerrygarrett.wordpress.com/2014/09/08/chef-what-model-food-truck-was-that/

Kowalsky, C. (2014, September 8). Chef. Retrieved April 27, 2019, from https://carlotakowalsky.wordpress.com/category/movies/page/10/

Shilcutt, K. (2015, March 02). Dinner and a Movie: Catch Chef at Kris Bistro. Retrieved April 27, 2019, from https://www.houstoniamag.com/articles/2015/3/2/dinner-and-a-movie-catch-chef-at-kris-bistro-march-2015

Solomon, D., & Solomon, D. (2014, May 02). Jon Favreau Explains How He Got Personal With “Chef”. Retrieved April 27, 2019, from https://www.fastcompany.com/3029833/jon-favreau-explains-how-he-got-personal-with-chef