Skip to main content

El Jefe (The Chef) - film review

One of those feel good (food) films of this year.  It is all about the food and sights and sounds of places across the contiental USA.

A renowned chef working at a LA area restaurant decides to spin a daring feast for a blogger / food critic about to visit that night.  He is banking on complete surprise and a wow factor when the owner played by Dustin Hoffman comes in and advises against it.  He plays safe and wants hired help (chef -Favreau's character) to focus on cooking what works, that pays the bills.

That takes away from the chef whose creativity feels inhibited and he decides to take a chance on himself to prove what he is capable of.  With some cliched storyline involving a divorced father (also the chef) that yearns to spend time with his kid who is growing up missing him, and some item number (by popular vote played by the estranged Sofia Vergara in her loud over the top mannerisms) the story tends to showcase the spunk of the protagonist who despite being ignorant of the challenge involved in going entreprenuerial manages to pull of a successful business.

He remodels and operates a food truck that he starts with help from his former line cook and his kid managing the marketing for the business.

The little boy helps him get up to speed on today's social phenonenon using handheld computing power and that helps snag the clientelle including the star power or cachet that the chef previously has established with his cooking.

The truck starts in Miami and travels west to California making pit stops along the way selling local delicacies with the hit item being a Cuban sandwich also called a Cubano.  I had the pleasure of eating some amazing Cubano at Porto's in Burbank CA recently which is all about the bread.  Toasted in a panini maker the bread is used to sandwich a slice of cheese and some salami.  It is a treat.

Film ends with a predictable but still wonderful to watch scene where the blogger (played by Oliver Platt) visits the food truck wanting to eat the wonderful palate pleasers that Chef has cooked up.  He offers a partnership to the chef to start a new restaurant where he can be the BOSS.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

A few good books

 On an informal mission to read one book a week as long as the eyes allow for such ambition. Fiction or non is not important as long as it entertains and /or educates. To that end the past few weeks have brought a bounty in the form of some wonderful and then not so engaging literature. Among the notables are - Non fiction category: 1. Good arguments by Bo Seo (how to handle a dispute or debate the most efficient way possible) 2. Genesis by Eric Schmidt (and former US Secy of State Henry Kissinger, who recently passed) - how AI might affect our lives as we know it 3. One in a billion - Zarna Garg (an autobiographical look at an Indian born American woman with a bindi narrated in a standup format - yes it is at times cliched but still funny) Fiction: 1. Personal by Lee Child (a vigilante story with Jack Reacher the giant, nomad protagonist of Child's novels goes hunting for a sniper) 2. Ramayana unraveled by Ami Ganatra (she might disagree about it being a work of fiction but oh wel...

Back in DC

This time for a tech conference in the realm of what else? AI. But applied to an oft neglected space called Knowledge Management. The latter is a community of practice that focuses on analyzing, organizing and making available reams of data that have been gathered over time by various functions within an organization for anyone in the company to utilize. This function or process is ripe for applying AI agents (or agentic AI framework) and optimize for better outcomes. It was informative. More rewarding was getting acquainted with folks who practice this craft as well as learning of what they see in the corporate or public sectors. Since the venue was Washington DC it also afforded me the chance to take evening strolls albeit the weather was trying. With wind chill in the single digit it still is a glamorous place to perambulate through history absorbing what this country has been through since its founding days. I was able to visit the place Lincoln was killed along with his monument t...

Costa Rica

 Our first foray into Central America. That elongated isthmus that forms the geographic boundary between two vast continents of North and South America. Specifically landing for NYE 2026 in San Jose, Costa Rica. Capital city for this region that does not have its own army, instead relying on its big bro the Estados Unidos to the north is a metropolis of approx. 500K people. Largely wilderness and with both a Pacific and Carribean/Atlantic coast the country is rich in bio diversity. In Spanish it means the rich coast so named by Columbus landing in early 16th century and being mesmerized by the local tribes sporting gold jewelry.   Our stay included visiting the foothills of a large strato volcano called Arenal and enjoying the naturally heated thermal baths for a while.  Lunching amidst lush forest and watching indigenous species of avian noise makers fly overhead. Toucans, some sort of pea hens, multiple song bird species completed the spectacle. Iguanas and a lonel...