Food and films are two things which have infinite potential to be comforting. When you combine the two elements, that pleasure factor only grows manifold. So, to give you a taste of the best in the genre, we bring to you our list of 10 lip-smackingly good food films which you MUST watch.
The Lunchbox
We seldom appreciate the love and art that goes into creating the dal, roti, and sabzi we eat everyday. Often prepared by mothers or wives nobody appreciates, each tiffin box we take to work or college, houses the feelings of the one cooking this food. A glimpse into that labour of love, The Lunchbox is a very unique and sweet story about falling in love unexpectedly in Mumbai.
Chocolat
Vianne is a wandering chocolatier who moves to a conservative Christian village in France with her daughter Anouk. A single mother, she is a bit of a “wild child” in the eyes of the villagers, raising an illegitimate child, wearing scandalous clothing (comparatively) and *gasp* refusing to go to church like the other villagers. Worst of all, she opens a chocolaterie during the period of lent when everyone is observing austerity. Showing the villagers what temptation really means, Vianne’s delectable chocolate wares introduce the townspeople to a sensory experience they couldn’t have imagined. But things aren’t that easy – and you’ll have to watch the movie to know what happens.
Today’s Special
Samir is a chef of Indian origin who grows up in the US, and wants to master the art of French cooking. However, his plans to head to Paris are trashed when his father, a restaurant owner, needs him to manage their Indian restaurant. Unable to deal with having to learn to cook Indian food for his father’s restaurant despite growing up eating spicy paneer tikka and butter chicken, he hires Akbar, a taxi driver, to cook in the restaurant and teach him how to improve his cooking. If there’s a movie sure to make you crave tandoori chicken and butter naan, this is it.
Chef
Starring Jon Favreau, this is the story of a headstrong chef who wants to cook for himself but is struggling to deal with other people’s opinions on what he cooks and enjoys. Too passionate to stay in the rat race, he opens his own business- a food truck- building it from scratch with the help of his schoolgoing son. What follows is his journey towards discovering what he really loves about cooking, and how that helps him connect with his young son. What better way to bond with your loved ones than over a couple of tacos?
Eat Drink Man Woman
A Taiwanese comedy about a family with three sisters with a widowed chef father, this film is all about delectable Chinese food and how this family bonds over it. Each of the sisters have their own relationship problems and mid-life crises going on, which they discuss at the kitchen table, over a delicious meal cooked by the father, who is better at whipping up a divine meal than knowing how to navigate the complicated lives of his three daughters. Good luck not craving some hakka noodles during this!
Maacher Jhol
Dev is a Bengali man who leaves behind his family and roots to move to France and become a chef of French cuisine. But an unexpected circumstance warrants his return to Calcutta, and that event is what inspires him to turn to the comforting food which made him want to be a chef in the first place- maacher jhol. Fish curry prepared a specific way by his mother, this quest for the same exact homemade maacher jhol is what he sets out to do, meanwhile discovering a good deal about his own history, re-examining his choices, and coming to realise a good many things about the role love plays in cooking.
Supersize Me
If you’re addicted to junk food and need saving, this is a must-watch documentary. An expose of McDonalds and what happens if you eat it, this will make you want to permanently switch to salads and clean eating. In this, a man undertakes the challenge of eating every meal from McDonalds for a month or so, and documents the changes to his health to show audiences what that does to your body. For all those who are in a seriously unhealthy binge-fest, watching this film can have a sobering effect on your appetite for fast food. Unlike all the other movies on this list, this one is more of a palate cleanser to make sure overeating doesn’t give you a heartburn.
Haute Cuisine
Basically all the French food porn you need in life, this stunningly-shot film is all about presentation and art in cooking. The story of a prominent French chef who is called to the French president’s residence as a chef, this narrative follows Hortense Laborie in her quest to continuously impress the president with her stellar cooking, despite internal politics and constant jealousy from other chefs around her. Few movies about food portray so much gourmet, or “high cooking” using such luxurious cinematography.
Waitress
Jenna is in an unhappy and abusive marriage, but what saves her from it all is her love for pies. A waitress, she likes to whip up innovative new pies everytime a surge of emotions overcome her. Gooey chocolate, fresh raspberries, pillowy marshmallows- this film is like the sweet confectionary shop of your dreams. But what makes it even better is that the yummy pie recipes are not the only good thing about the film- a solid back story, good supporting characters, and deep narrative make this a must-watch love story, too.
Julie & Julia
Julie is having a bit of a quarter-life crisis when she dares herself to start a cooking blog documenting her journey of learning French cooking. The twist is, she plans to do so in a year, and wants to learn to cook all the recipes from a book on French cuisine by the iconic and famous chef, Julia Child. As Julie embarks on her quest, the film shows simultaneous snippets of Child’s time in France, and how she learnt to cook French food being an American who simply liked eating, and then came around to writing an entire book about it. A film which is all about loving food and putting your life and soul into cooking, this leaves you feeling warm and comforted.
