Chef

 

In Chef, Jon Favreau plays chef Carl Casper.  Carl's happiest when he cooks, and life's pretty good at his restaurant.  Pretty good, that is, until he receives a humiliating review from food blogger Ramsey Michel (Oliver Platt), and the ensuing Twitter fight leads him to try to change his menu to show Ramsey that he hasn't lost his creativity.  The changes don't sit well with the restaurant's owner Riva (Dustin Hoffman), who wants him to "play the hits".  Carl storms out, then storms back in to confront Riva.  Carl's tirade goes viral, and he lays low for a while before finding a new opportunity to be creative and bond with his son.

Chef certainly made me hungry, as there is a heavy focus on food preparation and enjoyment throughout the film.  Unfortunately, Chef also made me restless and a little bored.  After the conflict early on, there's not a lot of drama.  Casper starts a food truck, and too much of the film after that is travelling to the next location, shopping for food, and Casper's son Percy tweeting.

What left the sourest taste in my mouth was Carl storming back into his restaurant to berate Ramsey  To be sure, Ramsey's review got personal (saying that Carl's weight gain probably came from eating the food sent back to the kitchen).  But Carl starts almost whining that the bad review really hurts and wasn't fair to his hard-working staff.  This seemed ridiculous to me, as surely Carl would have had a bad review before and not lost his mind (and job) because a food critic simply did his job.