The Multicultural Cuisine Look-The Hundred-Foot Journey

 

 

 

 

DVD Review

From The Pen Of Sam Lowell

The Hundred-Foot Journey, starring Helen Mirren, Om Puri, Manish Dayal, Charlotte LeBon, 2014 

It was bound to happen, no question, once the film industry caught up to this cycle’s uptick in people’s quests for all things culinary. Earlier this year I reviewed Chef, a story about a rags-to-riches latest trend food truck operator. In the film under review here, The Hundred-Foot Journey, we actually take a few steps back to the “fight” between the old-fashioned standard high-side French cuisine getting mixed in with a multicultural twist ancient India food made from hand-down to hand-down forbear memory in two restaurants in modern day France. (That “hundred-foot” in the title being literally true since the two restaurants are that far across the road from each other). Oh yeah, and mixed in with the battle of the cuisines is, well, the battle of the sexes, the also old-fashioned love story, or better stories.            

Here is how the love of food played out with love all mixed up like a garden salad (nice metaphor here right) topped off by the modern multicultural tolerance message. The restaurant-owning Kadam family, mostly importantly for the film, Papa (played by Om Puri) and Hassam who is being groomed as the next generation family chef (played by Manish Dayal) had been run out of India when the political winds shifted and wound up in asylum exile first in England where they could not make a go of it there then to France where they, mainly Papa decided to make a last stand to re-start his restaurant business in a small village. Decided to bring the ancient Indian cuisine to the peasantry so to speak. Problem One. French people (and others) as is well known like, really like French cuisine, actually look down in pity at the rest of the world and its hot dogs and hamburgers tastes, and the chances that they will go for Indian food seems remote. Problem Two. There is already a very fine French one-star, and eventually two-star, Michelin restaurant right across the street from their proposed site run by a Type-A owner, Madame Malloy (played by Helen Mirren who used to be Queen Elizabeth I when last seen in these precincts). So there was going to be a war between these two immovable objects who will fight just like McDonald’s and Burger King for market share. This has all the making a drag down fight to the finish.          

Well not exactly to the finish because then the cross-culinary mix gets mixed in with love interests, the first part between Hassam who is nothing by a genius chef in-waiting and an employee of Madame Malloy, Marguerite (played by Charlotte LeBon) who has her own dreams of being a master chef and the second part, once they get to know each other a little between Madame and Papa if you can believe that.

Here how where the ice got thawed.  Hassam wanted to see if he could make it in the high-end world of French cuisine since that is the standard in the industry so after the Indian restaurant established itself through Papa’s winning ways and after a few tense moments (brought on by Madame’s fears about her place) he becomes an apprentice chef at Madame’s place alongside Marguerite.       

Naturally since Hassam has been nurtured in the spice world of Indian food and is inventive enough to bring off combining aspects of the two cuisines he is acknowledged as the king hell king chef before long. Topped off by bringing Madame that second Michelin star she has craved for many years. But small town France is not where Hassam can make his mark to do that he needs the competitive edge of Paris to see how good he can be. Of course that will put a big crimp in the affair with Marguerite but Hassam must follow his stars. And he does set all of Paris on fire with his innovative touches. That however does not make him happy because he is missing something-missing his Marguerite. So he decides to goes back for his fellow chef and life in the village. Of course that other love interest between Papa and Madame had unfolded along the way and so all’s well that ends well. Especially since Hassam and Marguerite are going to run Madame’s restaurant and get it up to Michelin three-star speed. A funny look at multiculturalism, the world of the kitchen and the inevitable girl-boy thing that drives most films. Enough said.