Preface:
I've spent 11 years of my life in the hospitality industry (in two countries, Australia and Canada), worked my way up from dishwasher/prep cook all the way to head line cook and ultimately sous chef, before finally leaving the industry last month, to do something else with my life.
Now, on to my review, as well as a stern rebuttal of many of the other reviews I have read on here.
Quite a few, claim the film is bland and boring.
They claim that it doesn't contribute enough attention to the food or the industry, that the main character is unlikable and the romance is strained.
They are WRONG. Well at least about the movie not dedicating enough attention to the food. I agree that the main character is an unlikable monster with a vicious temper, a penchant for the dramatic, and the romance is indeed strained, but I'm gonna give it to you straight up.
The rest of the cast does an excellent job of portraying their roles; I was particularly impressed with Sienna Miller, Matthew Rhys, Omar Sy, Daniel Bruhl and Riccardo Scamarcio.
They all played their roles perfectly, to my eyes, and the discord that occurs between the characters is pretty stock standard for the dynamic that would exist in a brand new restaurant with a totally new menu, hoping to impress the Michelin star inspectors in LESS THAN A MONTH. Not to mention all the past baggage of Adam's poor conduct already looming over them.
The scenes that revolve around the food: treat it with the utmost respect. The scene where Adam (Bradley Cooper) is cooking in that young british chef's kitchen;
The attention he pays to each and every aspect of EVERY SINGLE INGREDIENT, is the kind of attention, care, and borderline fetishization that the very best chefs put into their food. It persists throughout the film, and its not an exaggeration of the extremely high regard with which chefs treat their ingredients, especially when those ingredients cost so much that it reduces the profit to a razor-thin margin.
Ideally, you want the food cost for a dish to cost around 20% of the final cost on the menu, not counting labour, electricity, water, gas, and a great many other incidentals such as waste (you buy a 2kg fish, you aren't getting 2kg of fish after its been scaled, gutted, boned and trimmed - but the secret of a good chef is using all that 'garbage' to make things like fish stock).
I'd say for the food they were serving, the food cost probably came to at least 55%, if not higher.
The number one rule in any decent restaurant, regardless if it is a 4 star restaurant in downtown Los Angeles, or a 3 Michelin star restaurant in Paris: RESPECT THE FOOD. Doesn't matter if you're serving poached turbot with an exquisitely prepared beurre blanc and perfectly cooked and seasoned vegetables, or if you're slanging filet mignons at a steakhouse.
The food comes before EVERYTHING else, and I mean, EVERYTHING.
And I'm sorry to shatter your rose-colored glasses, ladies and gentlemen, but the vast majority of hospitality employees, especially chefs, are not very well adjusted people.
A great many of them aren't particularly pleasant to be around, and its not just the likes of Gordon Ramsay, Marco-Pierre White and David Chang.
Heston Blumenthal, George Calombaris, and Shannon Bennett, as well as several prominent restaurant groups (The Rockpool dining group in particular) in Australia have recently been sued by the Fair Work sector of the government for stealing wages and tips that number in the tens of millions of dollars.
Not to mention the mental and physical and often sexual harassment that goes on under the table, and is rarely, if ever addressed.
This kind of behaviour isn't an anomaly, its the standard.
Hospitality is an industry that is riddled with misfits, drug addicts, alcoholics, narcissists, egomaniacs, nymphomaniacs, and the list goes on. Many of us got into hospitality because we felt we never fit in anywhere else. We didn't do well at school, and the concept of a stable 9-5 was a complete anathema to our natures. And then we realised, we were great cooks, and there might just be a place that we could call home: the kitchen.
Escoffier called a kitchen crew a 'brigade' for a reason. It has to operate with almost military precision, there is no room for dead weight, bleeding hearts or 'good enough'. It has to run like clockwork, and anyone who doesn't meet those requirements, is quickly and unceremoniously kicked to the curb. Kitchen crews that work together long enough are like an immensely dysfunctional family, we love and hate each other in equal parts.
The simple fact of the matter is, it takes a special kind of masochist to cook for a living.
Especially at the highest level of the industry. The sheer amount of stress during the breakfast/lunch/dinner rush, the wear and tear on the body, the cuts, the burns, the insane hours, the owners of the restaurant breathing down your neck constantly about food cost margins, as well as abuse from the managers and fellow chefs; It all adds up to a very, very stressful job that no rational human being would ever consider as a career.
Culinary school honestly doesn't mean much in the first few years of working in restaurants, you have to be able to take the heat, the stress, the injuries, the missed birthdays, funerals, public holidays, I even knew a few guys who were late to their own weddings or the birth of their first child.
IF, and ONLY IF, you can handle all that, then culinary school provides the foundation of knowledge and technique that separates the truly great chefs from the laymen.
The reason they do it? FOR THE FOOD. The acclaim and the money are a secondary concern.
It's even worse if the chef happens to be a Michelin star chef - did you seriously think the likes of Thomas Keller, Eric Ripert, Julien Tongurian, Adrian Ferra, and Grant Achatz, clock in at 8am and go home at 5pm? Absolutely not, they're at the markets as soon as the sun peeks over the horizon, in that kitchen at 5am, and they do not leave until dinner service finishes.
I'd wager an average Michelin star chef spends at least 100 hours a week in the kitchen alone, not counting trips to the markets to pick up the best ingredients, the hours spent agonizingly going over the tiniest little details to create the most sumptuous and satisfying dish possible. And then there's the ordering, scheduling, payroll... The list goes on, almost indefinitely.
And on the subject of Michelin stars: Bernard Loiseau shot himself in the head because he thought he MIGHT lose a star from his restaurant, and Benoît Violier followed his example recently. That's how much it means to them, to get to that level, and stay there on top.
You don't even want to know how many restaurant employees commit suicide, overdose or just plain drop dead from health issues as a result of that unsustainable lifestyle, each and every year. It numbers in the thousands.
You can hate the character of Adam Jones, and you should, he is a real nasty piece of work, but please don't think Bradley Cooper was trying to emulate Gordon on Hell's Kitchen, or one of MPW's famous blowouts.
It is FAR more common than you could even imagine. I've seen knives thrown across the kitchen, empty 40L stockpots kicked 20 feet across the room, broken up a couple of fist fights between cooks who had at least five too many drinks after work, and probably a few lines of Bolivia's finest to wash those down.
Chefs, bartenders, servers, a fair portion of us are prone to self medication, just to keep up with the exhausting pace and insane demand to perform. Stimulants during the day, alcohol and/or downers to get to sleep at night, if we do sleep.
Adam's fall from grace isn't purely for dramatic effect, nor is his breakdown after Michel (Omar Sy) ruins his sauce by putting too much cayenne pepper in it. He staked EVERYTHING, on that meal, and his sous chef sandbagged him (and I can't disagree that vengeance was in order, dropping rats into your friend and colleague's new restaurant? That's just the type of vicious and petty thing a chef like him would resort to, just for the sake of his own ego).
The romance is shoehorned in, for sure, but that kind of relationship is not unheard of when it is 2 chefs under the same roof. We are extremely high energy, extremely driven people, and when chefs date, it very rarely ends well. It could have been made more palatable, certainly.
I honestly I would have just tossed the romance angle out the window and focused on the meat and potatoes of the story, so to speak.
If you want to criticize the film, criticize it for what it is, not just because you dislike the way the main character treats his 'friends' and staff.
There are plenty of feel good cooking films out there, if you want a sugar-coated view of the restaurant business with an obligatory happy ending, there are a great many others I can recommend, for example: The Hundred Foot Journey, Chef, Mostly Martha, these are films that will satisfy that itch.
If you want a pure, unadulterated view of what restaurants are like at the very highest standard, this film is not far off the mark.
I'd also recommend a little documentary called Michelin Stars: The Madness of Perfection, if you enjoyed anything about this film and want to know more about the pinnacle of the restaurant business.
Now, on to my review, as well as a stern rebuttal of many of the other reviews I have read on here.
Quite a few, claim the film is bland and boring.
They claim that it doesn't contribute enough attention to the food or the industry, that the main character is unlikable and the romance is strained.
They are WRONG. Well at least about the movie not dedicating enough attention to the food. I agree that the main character is an unlikable monster with a vicious temper, a penchant for the dramatic, and the romance is indeed strained, but I'm gonna give it to you straight up.
The rest of the cast does an excellent job of portraying their roles; I was particularly impressed with Sienna Miller, Matthew Rhys, Omar Sy, Daniel Bruhl and Riccardo Scamarcio.
They all played their roles perfectly, to my eyes, and the discord that occurs between the characters is pretty stock standard for the dynamic that would exist in a brand new restaurant with a totally new menu, hoping to impress the Michelin star inspectors in LESS THAN A MONTH. Not to mention all the past baggage of Adam's poor conduct already looming over them.
The scenes that revolve around the food: treat it with the utmost respect. The scene where Adam (Bradley Cooper) is cooking in that young british chef's kitchen;
The attention he pays to each and every aspect of EVERY SINGLE INGREDIENT, is the kind of attention, care, and borderline fetishization that the very best chefs put into their food. It persists throughout the film, and its not an exaggeration of the extremely high regard with which chefs treat their ingredients, especially when those ingredients cost so much that it reduces the profit to a razor-thin margin.
Ideally, you want the food cost for a dish to cost around 20% of the final cost on the menu, not counting labour, electricity, water, gas, and a great many other incidentals such as waste (you buy a 2kg fish, you aren't getting 2kg of fish after its been scaled, gutted, boned and trimmed - but the secret of a good chef is using all that 'garbage' to make things like fish stock).
I'd say for the food they were serving, the food cost probably came to at least 55%, if not higher.
The number one rule in any decent restaurant, regardless if it is a 4 star restaurant in downtown Los Angeles, or a 3 Michelin star restaurant in Paris: RESPECT THE FOOD. Doesn't matter if you're serving poached turbot with an exquisitely prepared beurre blanc and perfectly cooked and seasoned vegetables, or if you're slanging filet mignons at a steakhouse.
The food comes before EVERYTHING else, and I mean, EVERYTHING.
And I'm sorry to shatter your rose-colored glasses, ladies and gentlemen, but the vast majority of hospitality employees, especially chefs, are not very well adjusted people.
A great many of them aren't particularly pleasant to be around, and its not just the likes of Gordon Ramsay, Marco-Pierre White and David Chang.
Heston Blumenthal, George Calombaris, and Shannon Bennett, as well as several prominent restaurant groups (The Rockpool dining group in particular) in Australia have recently been sued by the Fair Work sector of the government for stealing wages and tips that number in the tens of millions of dollars.
Not to mention the mental and physical and often sexual harassment that goes on under the table, and is rarely, if ever addressed.
This kind of behaviour isn't an anomaly, its the standard.
Hospitality is an industry that is riddled with misfits, drug addicts, alcoholics, narcissists, egomaniacs, nymphomaniacs, and the list goes on. Many of us got into hospitality because we felt we never fit in anywhere else. We didn't do well at school, and the concept of a stable 9-5 was a complete anathema to our natures. And then we realised, we were great cooks, and there might just be a place that we could call home: the kitchen.
Escoffier called a kitchen crew a 'brigade' for a reason. It has to operate with almost military precision, there is no room for dead weight, bleeding hearts or 'good enough'. It has to run like clockwork, and anyone who doesn't meet those requirements, is quickly and unceremoniously kicked to the curb. Kitchen crews that work together long enough are like an immensely dysfunctional family, we love and hate each other in equal parts.
The simple fact of the matter is, it takes a special kind of masochist to cook for a living.
Especially at the highest level of the industry. The sheer amount of stress during the breakfast/lunch/dinner rush, the wear and tear on the body, the cuts, the burns, the insane hours, the owners of the restaurant breathing down your neck constantly about food cost margins, as well as abuse from the managers and fellow chefs; It all adds up to a very, very stressful job that no rational human being would ever consider as a career.
Culinary school honestly doesn't mean much in the first few years of working in restaurants, you have to be able to take the heat, the stress, the injuries, the missed birthdays, funerals, public holidays, I even knew a few guys who were late to their own weddings or the birth of their first child.
IF, and ONLY IF, you can handle all that, then culinary school provides the foundation of knowledge and technique that separates the truly great chefs from the laymen.
The reason they do it? FOR THE FOOD. The acclaim and the money are a secondary concern.
It's even worse if the chef happens to be a Michelin star chef - did you seriously think the likes of Thomas Keller, Eric Ripert, Julien Tongurian, Adrian Ferra, and Grant Achatz, clock in at 8am and go home at 5pm? Absolutely not, they're at the markets as soon as the sun peeks over the horizon, in that kitchen at 5am, and they do not leave until dinner service finishes.
I'd wager an average Michelin star chef spends at least 100 hours a week in the kitchen alone, not counting trips to the markets to pick up the best ingredients, the hours spent agonizingly going over the tiniest little details to create the most sumptuous and satisfying dish possible. And then there's the ordering, scheduling, payroll... The list goes on, almost indefinitely.
And on the subject of Michelin stars: Bernard Loiseau shot himself in the head because he thought he MIGHT lose a star from his restaurant, and Benoît Violier followed his example recently. That's how much it means to them, to get to that level, and stay there on top.
You don't even want to know how many restaurant employees commit suicide, overdose or just plain drop dead from health issues as a result of that unsustainable lifestyle, each and every year. It numbers in the thousands.
You can hate the character of Adam Jones, and you should, he is a real nasty piece of work, but please don't think Bradley Cooper was trying to emulate Gordon on Hell's Kitchen, or one of MPW's famous blowouts.
It is FAR more common than you could even imagine. I've seen knives thrown across the kitchen, empty 40L stockpots kicked 20 feet across the room, broken up a couple of fist fights between cooks who had at least five too many drinks after work, and probably a few lines of Bolivia's finest to wash those down.
Chefs, bartenders, servers, a fair portion of us are prone to self medication, just to keep up with the exhausting pace and insane demand to perform. Stimulants during the day, alcohol and/or downers to get to sleep at night, if we do sleep.
Adam's fall from grace isn't purely for dramatic effect, nor is his breakdown after Michel (Omar Sy) ruins his sauce by putting too much cayenne pepper in it. He staked EVERYTHING, on that meal, and his sous chef sandbagged him (and I can't disagree that vengeance was in order, dropping rats into your friend and colleague's new restaurant? That's just the type of vicious and petty thing a chef like him would resort to, just for the sake of his own ego).
The romance is shoehorned in, for sure, but that kind of relationship is not unheard of when it is 2 chefs under the same roof. We are extremely high energy, extremely driven people, and when chefs date, it very rarely ends well. It could have been made more palatable, certainly.
I honestly I would have just tossed the romance angle out the window and focused on the meat and potatoes of the story, so to speak.
If you want to criticize the film, criticize it for what it is, not just because you dislike the way the main character treats his 'friends' and staff.
There are plenty of feel good cooking films out there, if you want a sugar-coated view of the restaurant business with an obligatory happy ending, there are a great many others I can recommend, for example: The Hundred Foot Journey, Chef, Mostly Martha, these are films that will satisfy that itch.
If you want a pure, unadulterated view of what restaurants are like at the very highest standard, this film is not far off the mark.
I'd also recommend a little documentary called Michelin Stars: The Madness of Perfection, if you enjoyed anything about this film and want to know more about the pinnacle of the restaurant business.
