Today's movie was "The Search for General Tao".

This 73 minute documentary travels around the globe looking for the origins of the Chinese-American dish, General Tao's Chicken. While doing this, they meet a wide variety of characters and a lot of interesting stories.

While that is a laudable goal, this film really addresses why Chinese -American food differs so much from food in China. It also addresses why there are Chinese restaurants in even the most remote locations in the US. It addresses why you see so many non-English speaking employees in those restaurants.

It is well worth the effort to find this movie.

This evening's movie was the One Hundred Foot Journey but that was covered above.

jlawrence01 wrote:Today's movie was "The Search for General Tao".

This 73 minute documentary travels around the globe looking for the origins of the Chinese-American dish, General Tao's Chicken. While doing this, they meet a wide variety of characters and a lot of interesting stories.

While that is a laudable goal, this film really addresses why Chinese -American food differs so much from food in China. It also addresses why there are Chinese restaurants in even the most remote locations in the US. It addresses why you see so many non-English speaking employees in those restaurants.

It is well worth the effort to find this movie.

This evening's movie was the One Hundred Foot Journey but that was covered above.

http://www.thesearchforgeneraltso.com/ - website shows VOD options.

James Beard: America’s First Foodie

“James Beard: America’s First Foodie” is a feature length documentary about, James Beard. Beard, the man the New York Times dubbed the “Dean of American Cookery,”

https://americasfirstfoodie.com/

Let me add the award-winning films of animated shorts master, PES: https://pesfilm.com/

And I recently watched two Japanese food related‎ projects. One was Midnight Diner: Tokyo Stories, a Netflix series currently streaming. An unnamed man has a small late-night  eatery where a dish has an emotional significance to each episode. The dishes appear simple and basic but like much of Japanese food, the flavors, texture and presentation is done well.
‎
The other was Little Forest: Summer /Autumn.
‎A 20-something woman lives alone in a rural part of Japan where she grows and forages and makes from scratch all her food. Each dish is highlighted and shown as she is preparing it, several dishes per episode. The contented sounds she makes as she eats makes you wish you were dining with her. Eventually a plot emerges about her relationship with her mother. Since the young woman depends on nature for food, the show has the seasonal aspect to it. (There are episodes for Winter / Spring.) Unfortunately this show is not widely available here and we were left on a cliffhanger, hopefully I can find the other episodes to watch at the Japan Info Center. It is based on a manga and a Korean version is planned.

Barbecue is an interesting look at international barbecue and how people do things around the world when cooking food over a fire (or buried in a fire pit), a good representation of countries and methods (although some may be stretching it a little to define how barbecue food is made, at least in a modern day sense).

Barbecue (Netflix, available August 15)
From director Matthew Salleh and producers Rose Tucker and Daniel Joyce, this documentary dives into various fire-based-cooking cultures around the world. Salleh takes viewers on a trip to 12 different countries and examines their barbecue traditions. The director hopes to tell a story that reaches far beyond food and instead explains how “something as basic as cooking over fire unites us across race, class, and culture in increasingly uncertain times.” Barbecue premiered as a Documentary Spotlight selection at the South by Southwest film festival in March.

Starting now on Turner Classic Movies as part of its "31 Days of Oscar" is the 1946 film "The Harvey Girls" with Judy Garland and Angela Lansbury. Its "On the Atchison, Topeka, and the Santa Fe" won the Oscar for Best Song, but foodie film fans may find the movie plot less interesting than the true story of the creation of America's first restaurant chain, which had an interesting later connection to Illinois' tollway oases.

Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (1971)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0067992/

Chocolat (2000)
http://www.imdb.com/title/

Ratatouille (2007)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0382932/

The Founder (2016)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4276820/

Julie & Julia (2009)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1135503/

jlawrence01 wrote:Today's movie was "The Search for General Tao".

This 73 minute documentary travels around the globe looking for the origins of the Chinese-American dish, General Tao's Chicken. While doing this, they meet a wide variety of characters and a lot of interesting stories.

While that is a laudable goal, this film really addresses why Chinese -American food differs so much from food in China. It also addresses why there are Chinese restaurants in even the most remote locations in the US. It addresses why you see so many non-English speaking employees in those restaurants.

It is well worth the effort to find this movie.

This evening's movie was the One Hundred Foot Journey but that was covered above.

this doc is now available on amazon for rent or to buy. also in the 'saved' section of my netflix DVD's....

I haven't scanned the entire thread, so forgive me if this has already been discussed. Has anyone seen The Hundred-Foot Journey? It's been on cable a bunch recently and while channel-flipping I just couldn't turn away because the cinematography is excellent and many of the food depictions are beautiful.

However, produced in part by Oprah and Spielberg, the film is, as one might suspect, a giant stew-pot of improbable schmaltz (pun partially intended). I suppose if one doesn't know very much about the world of Michelin stars and (high-end) restaurants, the story presented here could be seen as credible. But for the more informed, the narrative will surely induce involuntary groans and head shakes from nearly end to end. Still, I'd say that if you can view it without spending anything other than your time to do so, the cinematography alone might make it worth it.

IMDB.com synopsis here.

=R=

^^^^^^
Thanks for the recommendation. FYI, as of today (6/16/18) it's available on demand from Showtime.

I found Hundred Foot Journey very stereotyped, dumbed down and full of tropes. Although it did look good and I liked the friendship/light romance between Madame and the Indian father some of the better parts of the film, I think it is for a pretty mainstream audience rather than foodies or someone who has a wider film watching history. That high-end restaurant kitchen that Hassan works in briefly when he leaves Madame's bistro, looks more like a fancy dining room--the kitchen has fashionable lighting and glass countertops--very impractical.

ronnie_suburban wrote: I just couldn't turn away because the cinematography is excellent and many of the food depictions are beautiful.

Still, I'd say that if you can view it without spending anything other than your time to do so, the cinematography alone might make it worth it.

=R=

Saw it a few years ago, and agree that it was a beautifully shot film and worth a watch.

Currently on Netflix streaming there is a show called Japanese Style Originator. It is about Japanese traditional culture and craftspeople and often has segments about food. It also has a game show aspect as a panel of celebrities guess about names of certain items used in daily life. You can see that the Japanese language is very exacting when talking about items.

Local restaurant recreates iconic movie food.

Matt wrote:Local restaurant recreates iconic movie food.

I was hoping for Babette's Feast.

I'm watching a Korean series on Netflix right now called "Chocolate." It's a romance with the female lead being a chef. I'm really enjoying the scenes where she is cooking traditional Korean dishes. Even if you're not a fan of Korean romances, I think it's worth taking a look just for the cooking.

I am certain I shared this before, but it bears repeating, Greenaway's The Cook, The Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover

It has been "two a days" on movies for the past month. All these movies are free to watch on YouTube and are food themed:

Toast
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7w13v4eN8DM

Just Eat It: A Food Waste Story
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjm6VP9L4W8

Tortilla Soup
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o7RpSvi9Hy8

Hi- I was just flipping channels to find something to watch on tv, and I ran across something on WTTW Prime. They are right now showing the first installment of a four part series from Britain called Delicious. One of the actors was on Game of Thrones. It is supposed to be about food. It is on starting at 8:00pm on Fridays for the next four weeks on Prime.

Les Blank: Always for Pleasure, I picked this anthology from The Criterion Collection Closet the first time I was invited. Les documents music and food, not necessarily in that order with extraordinary heart. In fact he is so beloved there is a giant poster for this collection in one of the offices I didn't get to see my first visit. The Closet, for those unaware is the deep repository of everything the Collection has published, and, those invited, mainly great directors and actors get to pick as much DVD/Blu-Ray from the shelves to their heart's content. Funny enough, I chose A David Lynch documentary once and, instead, it contained Fassbinder's The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant. I grok Fassbinder, so I find the juxtaposition of book/cover humorous and sad.

Living in Chicago, we hear these amazing restaurant success stories that sound like unimaginable adventures. Too often, these tales have undergone massive editing and polishing to the point where even the worst struggle sounds like a finely crafted Shakespearean sonnet. We rarely see the raw truth. We look at successful restaurants and chefs with their list of awards, and the first thing we think is that they are different from people like us. Then an independent documentary like Susan Feniger. FORKED shows up.

https://chicagoreader.com/food-drink/fr ... to-street/