Thoughts Uncut — Chef movie (2014)

A truly talented chef who is sensitive and vulnerable like us. The internet that makes everything go viral and a kid who only finds reasons to hang out with his busy dad. That’s the premise of Chef.

Chef is about yes, you guessed it right — a Chef who is just every bit emotional and needy/ desperate as all of us but the problem is that he’s open about it instead of denying and acting cool (the way we do it and cry miserably in private). He’s hurt and he’s an emotional eater like us. He has serious issues and is as much human as the weeping girl next door. But he is also exceptionally good at what he does and he knows it. He doesn’t try to prove his worth, he just cooks and takes your breath away in the very first bite. He’s overweight, corny, and not at all the big n tough macho guy we expect him to be (with all his culinary/knife skills like Salt Bae). But he loves what he does and is true to himself. He doesn’t want to please anybody around him but unfortunately he’s in chains like all of us. A modern-day slave to his own problems. And how he breaks out of this vicious-cycle-of-a-life led for the sake of others is what the movie is all about.

It’s a road film. It’s also a lot of Miami, Latino folks, delicioso Cuban sandwiches, booty-shaking Salsa tunes and bet your sweet ass, a lot of close-up food styling that makes you drool through the entire movie. Apart from all the fun and fluff, it’s also every bit serious — In his own words, he touches lives with the food he makes! In a scene where he takes his son out to the market on a weekend, he buys the kid something he himself grew up eating just so that his son can taste it for the first time. And when his brainy son remembers New Orleans with the history lessons at school, our Chef explains the culture of New Orleans through food at the stall to his son. And hence, they go to New Orleans and discover the food and their long-lost father-son bond, together.