So, I have gone through, what is essentially, a study in opposites in the last 12 hours or so of eating.
Yesterday, I was down with a massive hangover, and as is often the case, my response to this was to crave a big greasy burger. I for some reason passed on grabbing a Jody's melt, and wound up going all through my short work shift without eating anything but a bit of miso and rice. So when I got off work, and my friend arrived to cart me off to Bend, I implored him to take me somewhere for a big greasy burger.
So, we went to Kayo's Roadhouse, a cheesy oddly Western-ish themed, and remarkably large restaurant on the north end of Redmond. My friend remarked that the cheep wood and sheet metal decor reminded him of the Japanese internment camps, and this disturbing ambience would prove to foreshadow the entire meal.
After considerable poring over the rather disappointing menu, he decided on the 8oz. petite sirloin, medium rare at my insistence, while I stuck to my guns and ordered a burger with Swiss, grilled onions, and bacon, despite the rather idiotic pricing scheme (purchase the base burger, then tack on the extras for a dollar a pop).
We were first served a basket of rolls which were obviously cheap and frozen, served with a cinnamon butter, and a simple Caesar salad. My friend was suitably impressed with the cinnamon butter, while I found the choice to be a bit odd to accompany a savory dish. The Caesar was reasonably competent I suppose, if, like most, largely inauthentic.
Then came the entrees, and this is of course the part where everything falls apart. For starters, my burger is not greasy at all, in fact, it's dry as a bone. Because it's burnt. The bottom half of the pre-formed and obviously also frozen, pre-packaged burger patty is a layer of black char. The fries are OK, again frozen but this is a common state of affairs in most American restaurants. My only quibble with those was that they had rather inexplicably added cinnamon to the seasoning salt they were dusted with, which again seemed rather out of place.
My companion's steak was, of course, not actually medium rare at all. As my mother taught me as a lad, the vast majority of restaurants tend to overcook everything, so it is generally wise to order the next level of doneness down from whatever you actually want. As a result, the steak wound up coming to us medium, with only a hint of pink left in it. Thank God he took my advice, and didn't ask for medium as he'd originally intended, as I fear for what resulting slab of likely near-charcoal meat might've wound up on his plate. However, this was a minor injustice compared to what one experienced upon actually tasting the steak. Honestly, neither of us were actually convinced it was a real steak, the texture was entirely wrong. There was no realy fiber to the meat, the mouthfeel more resembled a finely ground hamburger that had simply been pressed into a shape vaguely resembling a steak. And the actual flavor bore a strong resemblance to that organ meat flavor one gets in a beef heart or cheap supermarket chuck steak. The capper on the plate was supposedly mashed potatoes, but I'm personally more convinced it was some kind of synthetic gum resin, given the amount of texture and flavor that was left in them.
A waitress eventually came around and replaced my burnt burger with a second offering, as well as another helping of the strange cinnamon fries, which again wound up being the lion's share of my consumption. I made a half hearted attempt at this second burger and while they had managed to at least not actively burn this twice-damned slab of ground beef byproduct, on the whole it was still largely dismal, and the cheese wasn't even properly melted. It was actually still cold on the corners that stuck out of the side of the burger. Something about the whole thing somehow triggered my nose's sense memory, and I found myself again smelling the unspeakably foul "sukiyaki" from my own place of employ, and my appetite basically disappeared at this moment. I'd managed to fill myself up well enough on fries at this point, so at least I'd managed to feed the hunger from my all day fast.
A manager eventually came around as we were leaving, and comped us for $9 of the bill, which still left us paying $20 with tip, which was still far too much for what is, quite undoubtedly, one of the worst meals I have ever consumed. I don't even know that I would've been entirely satisfied with a total comp, and I will not be returning there ever again.
However, this afternoon's meal, was far superior. Instead of a restaurant, we cooked at home. Instead of Western cuisine, we went with American Chinese, in the form of the crab puff.
I had discussed earlier in the week doing a sort of "deep fried weekend", setting up one of the pans as a deep fryer, and going to town with all sorts of fun things. My main driving thought was Buffalo wings, a personal favorite of mine, and one that's just plain better when it's fresh fried at home. My friend however had seen an episode of Good Eats and been left with a massive craving for anything involving wontons.
As crab puffs are one of my favorite appetizer dishes in the world, they seemed like a natural fit for the combined preferences and cravings, being both deep fried, and wonton related.
So we went to the restaurant supply store, got a fryer thermometer, some wonton skins, a big package of imitation crab and a bottle of Kikkoman sweet and sour sauce, and from the regular supermarket, acquired some green onion, cilantro and carrot. We already had a good sized hunk of cream cheese in the fridge, as well as a big jug of cooking oil that had been acquired earlier in the week in preparation for the "deep fried weekend".
The filling wound up consisting of, of course, crab and cream cheese, as well as peeled carrot, chopped green onion, and dashes each of chopped garlic, salt, pepper, malt vinegar, Olive Garden Fiamme hot sauce, and olive oil, and then mashed all together. This went, about half a teaspoon or so at a time, folded into the wonton skins, first folding them in half and sealing the edge with water, then crimping edge corner flap twice.
These got dropped into hot oil, about 350 degrees F, and cooked till nice and golden brown on each side, generally taking about 3-5 minutes at a guess, turning them at least once during cooking.
The sweet and sour turned out to be largely disgusting, so for a dipping sauce we wound up just using some sweet chili sauce with a splash of malt vinegar.
The sauce wound up being largely superflous however. They were, simply, the best crab puffs I've ever consumed, better even than any of the restaurants I've eaten them at that impressed me with their quality. They had enough of a good flavor all their own, that they really were better without the sauce as tasty as it was.
We ate an insane number of them, in the end splitting something like 30 or more of the things, leaving the both of us stuffed to the gills. I ate so many I don't think I'll be able to think of eating them again for a while.
Certainly made up for last night's pathetic excuse for "food".
Sunday, December 23, 2007
Thursday, December 20, 2007
Kitchen nightmares.
I hate my job.
OK, lot's of people hate their jobs, so this should probably sound like a bit of a banal statement to the vast majority of you.
Thing is, I didn't hate my job before. But my workplace is rapidly doing it's absolute best to burn me completely the fuck out. Somehow, with every passing week, it seems I work harder and harder and harder, for the privilege of earning less and less money, and I'm frankly tiring of it.
At this juncture, the honeymoon period hasn't just worn off, it's jumped straight to the "plotting to kill your spouse and collect the insurance money" stage, or at least quite near abouts.
I am the only cook. This is, by and large, one of the core problems as it is, because it's simply a fuck of a lot to handle just getting orders out while running all the stations, and not having anything come out burnt to a crisp or forgotten or done wrong. This also means I'm the only one doing the prep most of the time, which is also something of a bear, but no big deal so long as I have time to do it, But lately, my hours have been dwindling rather rapidly, meaning that I have less and less time to actually get the prep work done, and on top of that, despite my hours shrinking, we've been getting more steady business, meaning I'm too busy cooking orders to work on prep at all. Which leads to lots of fun days wherein I get swamped with more orders than I can handle as it is, with the added joy of running out of bloody everything in the middle of a rush. And then comes the surprise orders for tempura bits for the sushi, or requests to come up and help with the sushi or wash dishes (as there is no dishwasher either), meaning further delay of often vital prep.
To top this off, there's an increasingly flippant and even condescending attitude towards my presence there that I'm getting rather agitated with. The other day, the waitress had the audacity to actually walk up and take one of the pans off my goddamn range while I was in the middle of setting up mise en place for a fried rice order. I've gone from being respected as a cook who knows what the hell he's doing, to being treated like another of their long line of idiot teenagers that have filled the whites before me, constantly being second guessed and nitpicked over everything I do, usually with disastrous results. I've actually had to goddamn fight over things so simple as how to rapidly thaw a box of shrimp. I have less authority over how things run in the kitchen apparently than random fuckwit friends of the owner's who claim to have worked in a sushi bar once, who in today's instance actually deigned to dictate the nature of the yakisoba recipe.
And now the aforementioned waitress has basically turned my goddamn kitchen into a daycare. During the lunch shift I now have to deal with the accompaniment of two screaming 5 year olds running amok in my kitchen, and of course, their parent's idea of "discipline" basically amounts to talking to them in a displeased tone. That old cliche about the definition of insanity springs instantly to mind whenever I witness her explaining for the hundredth time that they are not to leave their little corner in the back of the house. Tonight I also got the oddity of her recruiting her older daughter for clean up work. Yes, that's right, unpaid child labor, right in my kitchen.
And for all this, I make barely enough to pay the bills, and much of my food throughout the week comes from my meager tips. I've had to borrow money twice just so I'd have enough cash to eat over the weekend.
This will not last much longer, thankfully. Earlier this week I was informed by my landlord that he is losing the house, and as a result, I have to move, within the next several weeks. A perusal of the local housing scene has made it abundantly clear that I'm unlikely to find anything satisfactory, so I've decided to take advantage of the situation and use it as an excuse to get the fuck out of this redneck ass town, and start looking for a job elsewhere, and a cheap flat to go with. At this point, even if I'm making minimum wage, if it's at least full time, I'll be doing more comfortably than I am now.
For the most part, I haven't really been doing much cooking even, I've simply been too burned out, and have even fallen in with the dreaded frozen meal again. However, there have been a few shining beacons in the darkened wasteland of my recent diet, which I shall recount thusly:
1) Numbered by utmost importance, is Hola! Mexican Restaurant. A friend dragged me along last weekend, and it is, quite simply, the best restaurant in Central Oregon. Absolutely, and utterly, fantastic. The lomo de puerco I ate during my visit was, quite simply, the most delicious and perfectly cooked piece of pork I've ever consumed in my entire life. We're talking blow job good here. I have difficulty thinking about it without tears welling up in my eyes, it was like a tiny orgasm every time I took a bite of the absolutely fork tender, deliciously moist, perfectly seasoned pig. A further sampling of my friend's mole poblano provided one of the most complex and well crafted blends of flavor I have ever experienced. We finished the meal with a not at all bad and actually quite delicious coconut flan, in which my only quibble was simply that it didn't taste all that recognizably like coconut.
2) Sushi. I have sort of stumbled into an informal and unspoken arrangement whereby it seems I can make myself sushi all I want, so long as I'm providing the main ingredient. This has led to some interesting experimentations as a result of my cash-starved situation, and so far I've made sushi with such oddities as canned kippers (rolled with cream cheese and eel sauce), smoked mussels (prepared similarly to the "spicy tuna" roll), and probably the oddest, turkey pastrami, which went through several iterations. However the piece de resistance was when I lucked out on a sale and got a hold of our next item . . .
3) Oysters. The nearby Fred Meyers had a sale on medium oysters, and I leapt upon them. $2.50 for a 4 oz jar of oysters that is normally $5 was too good to pass up. Now, I have never actually had oysters that I recall, excepting some utterly vile canned smoked ones I was once subjected to by the owner of my previous Japanese restaurant job, but I decided in my head that what sounded like a good idea was to tempura fry them and roll them into a maki with some mayo and tobiko and whatever else sounded good. I wound up picking up some shiitake mushrooms as well, and sauteeing them with a bit of salt, pepper, and a dash of chili oil, and then rolled them with the fried oysters, spicy mayo, green onion, and carrot, into a Japanese style maki (which I am not very good at I might note, a great shame of mine). However, I still had 4 fist sized fried oysters left after making two rolls to bring to my computer shop guy, so I decided not to let them go to waste, and to eat them with a bit of ponzu.
This was really the best route to take. Because those oysters were absolutely incredible. Rich, melt in your mouth texture, wonderful flavor, and a touch of the sea that for once is welcome, instead of off putting. I eat them and I want to move to the coast somewhere, and live off them for the rest of my life. The sushi by comparison was simply too busy, and too much going on, and it drowned out the magic of the oysters. Even the tempura I used seemed to be just a bit too much getting in between me and the good stuff, and I now understand what Bourdain sees in the damn things, because I honestly just want to eat one of the buggers raw now. The closer to the primal essence of oyster, the better. Shame I'm not going to be getting them that fresh any time between now and I don't know when. In the mean time I think I'll settle for tweaking my frying method to cut down on extraneous breading.
I hope they have more tomorrow. They were almost sold out when I got today's.
OK, lot's of people hate their jobs, so this should probably sound like a bit of a banal statement to the vast majority of you.
Thing is, I didn't hate my job before. But my workplace is rapidly doing it's absolute best to burn me completely the fuck out. Somehow, with every passing week, it seems I work harder and harder and harder, for the privilege of earning less and less money, and I'm frankly tiring of it.
At this juncture, the honeymoon period hasn't just worn off, it's jumped straight to the "plotting to kill your spouse and collect the insurance money" stage, or at least quite near abouts.
I am the only cook. This is, by and large, one of the core problems as it is, because it's simply a fuck of a lot to handle just getting orders out while running all the stations, and not having anything come out burnt to a crisp or forgotten or done wrong. This also means I'm the only one doing the prep most of the time, which is also something of a bear, but no big deal so long as I have time to do it, But lately, my hours have been dwindling rather rapidly, meaning that I have less and less time to actually get the prep work done, and on top of that, despite my hours shrinking, we've been getting more steady business, meaning I'm too busy cooking orders to work on prep at all. Which leads to lots of fun days wherein I get swamped with more orders than I can handle as it is, with the added joy of running out of bloody everything in the middle of a rush. And then comes the surprise orders for tempura bits for the sushi, or requests to come up and help with the sushi or wash dishes (as there is no dishwasher either), meaning further delay of often vital prep.
To top this off, there's an increasingly flippant and even condescending attitude towards my presence there that I'm getting rather agitated with. The other day, the waitress had the audacity to actually walk up and take one of the pans off my goddamn range while I was in the middle of setting up mise en place for a fried rice order. I've gone from being respected as a cook who knows what the hell he's doing, to being treated like another of their long line of idiot teenagers that have filled the whites before me, constantly being second guessed and nitpicked over everything I do, usually with disastrous results. I've actually had to goddamn fight over things so simple as how to rapidly thaw a box of shrimp. I have less authority over how things run in the kitchen apparently than random fuckwit friends of the owner's who claim to have worked in a sushi bar once, who in today's instance actually deigned to dictate the nature of the yakisoba recipe.
And now the aforementioned waitress has basically turned my goddamn kitchen into a daycare. During the lunch shift I now have to deal with the accompaniment of two screaming 5 year olds running amok in my kitchen, and of course, their parent's idea of "discipline" basically amounts to talking to them in a displeased tone. That old cliche about the definition of insanity springs instantly to mind whenever I witness her explaining for the hundredth time that they are not to leave their little corner in the back of the house. Tonight I also got the oddity of her recruiting her older daughter for clean up work. Yes, that's right, unpaid child labor, right in my kitchen.
And for all this, I make barely enough to pay the bills, and much of my food throughout the week comes from my meager tips. I've had to borrow money twice just so I'd have enough cash to eat over the weekend.
This will not last much longer, thankfully. Earlier this week I was informed by my landlord that he is losing the house, and as a result, I have to move, within the next several weeks. A perusal of the local housing scene has made it abundantly clear that I'm unlikely to find anything satisfactory, so I've decided to take advantage of the situation and use it as an excuse to get the fuck out of this redneck ass town, and start looking for a job elsewhere, and a cheap flat to go with. At this point, even if I'm making minimum wage, if it's at least full time, I'll be doing more comfortably than I am now.
For the most part, I haven't really been doing much cooking even, I've simply been too burned out, and have even fallen in with the dreaded frozen meal again. However, there have been a few shining beacons in the darkened wasteland of my recent diet, which I shall recount thusly:
1) Numbered by utmost importance, is Hola! Mexican Restaurant. A friend dragged me along last weekend, and it is, quite simply, the best restaurant in Central Oregon. Absolutely, and utterly, fantastic. The lomo de puerco I ate during my visit was, quite simply, the most delicious and perfectly cooked piece of pork I've ever consumed in my entire life. We're talking blow job good here. I have difficulty thinking about it without tears welling up in my eyes, it was like a tiny orgasm every time I took a bite of the absolutely fork tender, deliciously moist, perfectly seasoned pig. A further sampling of my friend's mole poblano provided one of the most complex and well crafted blends of flavor I have ever experienced. We finished the meal with a not at all bad and actually quite delicious coconut flan, in which my only quibble was simply that it didn't taste all that recognizably like coconut.
2) Sushi. I have sort of stumbled into an informal and unspoken arrangement whereby it seems I can make myself sushi all I want, so long as I'm providing the main ingredient. This has led to some interesting experimentations as a result of my cash-starved situation, and so far I've made sushi with such oddities as canned kippers (rolled with cream cheese and eel sauce), smoked mussels (prepared similarly to the "spicy tuna" roll), and probably the oddest, turkey pastrami, which went through several iterations. However the piece de resistance was when I lucked out on a sale and got a hold of our next item . . .
3) Oysters. The nearby Fred Meyers had a sale on medium oysters, and I leapt upon them. $2.50 for a 4 oz jar of oysters that is normally $5 was too good to pass up. Now, I have never actually had oysters that I recall, excepting some utterly vile canned smoked ones I was once subjected to by the owner of my previous Japanese restaurant job, but I decided in my head that what sounded like a good idea was to tempura fry them and roll them into a maki with some mayo and tobiko and whatever else sounded good. I wound up picking up some shiitake mushrooms as well, and sauteeing them with a bit of salt, pepper, and a dash of chili oil, and then rolled them with the fried oysters, spicy mayo, green onion, and carrot, into a Japanese style maki (which I am not very good at I might note, a great shame of mine). However, I still had 4 fist sized fried oysters left after making two rolls to bring to my computer shop guy, so I decided not to let them go to waste, and to eat them with a bit of ponzu.
This was really the best route to take. Because those oysters were absolutely incredible. Rich, melt in your mouth texture, wonderful flavor, and a touch of the sea that for once is welcome, instead of off putting. I eat them and I want to move to the coast somewhere, and live off them for the rest of my life. The sushi by comparison was simply too busy, and too much going on, and it drowned out the magic of the oysters. Even the tempura I used seemed to be just a bit too much getting in between me and the good stuff, and I now understand what Bourdain sees in the damn things, because I honestly just want to eat one of the buggers raw now. The closer to the primal essence of oyster, the better. Shame I'm not going to be getting them that fresh any time between now and I don't know when. In the mean time I think I'll settle for tweaking my frying method to cut down on extraneous breading.
I hope they have more tomorrow. They were almost sold out when I got today's.
Friday, December 14, 2007
The importance of fat.
I've discussed this with a few folks lately, and thought I'd bring my thoughts on the subject here:
We are all too damn afraid of fat.
It's been stripped from our food rather systematically over the last couple of decades, and as far as I am concerned, it's a damn crime.
Look at the hamburger. Most people don't even know what a good hamburger tastes like anymore, because they've never had one that hasn't been completely stripped of any fat. The "lean burger" is a damn crime, you cannot make a decent hamburger without the proper percentage of fat. A good fatty burger can even survive the evils of "well done".
Sausage is the same way anymore. When I go to the market and buy ground sausage, I expect there to be enough fat in that sausage to make gravy with afterwards, but with the exception of Ray's, the stuff you find in every grocery store around here is so dry and lean that I have to fry a couple of strips of bacon along side to get the fat I need to make a roux.
Fat isn't that big a deal, people, just don't eat so goddamn much of it, and get off your ass once in a while. There's a reason so much of that old country homecooking is riddled with it, it's actually a really good source of long burn energy, provided you're actually working for a living and not sitting on your ass all day.
At least we've managed to fight off the damn anti-carb thing.
We are all too damn afraid of fat.
It's been stripped from our food rather systematically over the last couple of decades, and as far as I am concerned, it's a damn crime.
Look at the hamburger. Most people don't even know what a good hamburger tastes like anymore, because they've never had one that hasn't been completely stripped of any fat. The "lean burger" is a damn crime, you cannot make a decent hamburger without the proper percentage of fat. A good fatty burger can even survive the evils of "well done".
Sausage is the same way anymore. When I go to the market and buy ground sausage, I expect there to be enough fat in that sausage to make gravy with afterwards, but with the exception of Ray's, the stuff you find in every grocery store around here is so dry and lean that I have to fry a couple of strips of bacon along side to get the fat I need to make a roux.
Fat isn't that big a deal, people, just don't eat so goddamn much of it, and get off your ass once in a while. There's a reason so much of that old country homecooking is riddled with it, it's actually a really good source of long burn energy, provided you're actually working for a living and not sitting on your ass all day.
At least we've managed to fight off the damn anti-carb thing.
Saturday, December 1, 2007
I have seen Ratatouille.
I know, I know, it's been out for quite some time. I've never been much of a TV and film guy, I'm always too busy playing games or pottering around on message boards with my spare time, and very often simply have no TV at all. It's not that I don't like either of those things, it's just that, barring my recent extended and involuntary sabbatical to the familial homestead, most of the time I simply don't follow it or bother to watch it much.
In the specific case of Ratatouille, there was the additional hitch of it being a Disney/Pixar film, qualifiers that I largely avoid purely on reflex.
However, this one, had hints of promise. Thomas freaking Keller advised on the film. Anthony Bourdain called it one of the best restaurant movies he'd ever seen. And then came the final straw earlier today, when rumors trickled in to one of my IRC haunts that it was in the running for an Academy Award nomination.
My ears perked up. There was some discussion on the part of some of the chatters as to how in the hell a restaurant movie could even have such appeal as to net an Oscar. I attempted, in my own groggy, sleep-deprived, and largely futile way, to impart upon the residents as to the kind of drama and tension that goes on in a restaurant when the shit really hits the fan, the rising level of interest in the mysterious workings of the professional kitchen, and the proliferation of legend and myth surrounding it. But largely it all seemed to fall on deaf ears.
Having now seen it, I know now how I should have responded: "Just watch the fucking movie."
To really sum up in my mind exactly why this film is bloody incredible, however, I must dip into a rather singular moment from the film, it's climax to be exact. While most of you reading this have probably already seen it, for the sake of those who haven't, I will simply state that this is a film that captures the spirit of truly great cooking in a truly brilliant and clever fashion that I simply did not expect, that you must see it immediately, and that you should also really, really skip reading the rest of this post, because I'm about to spoil the hell out of one of the biggest moments in the film.
I'm serious. Stop it, now. Go get the film, watch it, then come back. You'll understand, trust me.
The film climaxes on what can be no better explained than by the application of the sadly cliche phraseology of "a moment of clarity". Not just for the for the character who experiences it, but for the audience, the creator, and I suspect a bit of the real life chef, Mr. Keller, who created the dish that sparks it.
The ominous, vampire-like restaurant critic is served the titular dish, with Remy the rat's (and real life chef Thomas Keller's) particular spin. We see him take a bite, and then suddenly, he is instantly transported back in time, to his childhood, standing in the doorway with a sad look on his face, his mother, smiling back, and comforting him with a bowl of simple ratatouille.
All in an instant, transported by memory to a better place, a better time, simply through the gentle touch of a chef, bringing to life a seemingly simple, unimpressive dish, simultaneously new and remarkable, and yet also old and familiar.
This is the power of truly great food. And this is why Ratatouille is one of the most incredible pieces of cinema I have ever seen, because in that brief scene, more than any other in a line of well-crafted moments and visual cues, we see it represented visually to a level of clarity I wouldn't have thought possible in the medium. So much is conveyed in such a brief, yet powerful image, and it seems to bely a level of understanding that I was simply floored by.
Setting aside my snarky, cynic's facade a moment, I must humbly admit that scene literally makes my cry just thinking about it. Its like someone reached right in my chest and found that spark that makes me want to do what I do, and thrust it on screen, and then comforts me softly just as Ego's mother comforts him.
The rest of the film is, in many ways, simply icing on the cake. The incredible verisimilitude, the clever writing, the animation, the sight gags, Collette, all really build the foundation for that final resolute moment in a way that few films manage.
So yes, it deserves an Oscar nod. At least a damn nomination. I'd consider it a victory for chefs and cooks everywhere if this film got the recognition it deserves, simply for managing to portray so well with so little, the passion and the joy that is food and cooking. This is an Important Movie(tm), if not for the rest of them, then at least for us.
In the specific case of Ratatouille, there was the additional hitch of it being a Disney/Pixar film, qualifiers that I largely avoid purely on reflex.
However, this one, had hints of promise. Thomas freaking Keller advised on the film. Anthony Bourdain called it one of the best restaurant movies he'd ever seen. And then came the final straw earlier today, when rumors trickled in to one of my IRC haunts that it was in the running for an Academy Award nomination.
My ears perked up. There was some discussion on the part of some of the chatters as to how in the hell a restaurant movie could even have such appeal as to net an Oscar. I attempted, in my own groggy, sleep-deprived, and largely futile way, to impart upon the residents as to the kind of drama and tension that goes on in a restaurant when the shit really hits the fan, the rising level of interest in the mysterious workings of the professional kitchen, and the proliferation of legend and myth surrounding it. But largely it all seemed to fall on deaf ears.
Having now seen it, I know now how I should have responded: "Just watch the fucking movie."
To really sum up in my mind exactly why this film is bloody incredible, however, I must dip into a rather singular moment from the film, it's climax to be exact. While most of you reading this have probably already seen it, for the sake of those who haven't, I will simply state that this is a film that captures the spirit of truly great cooking in a truly brilliant and clever fashion that I simply did not expect, that you must see it immediately, and that you should also really, really skip reading the rest of this post, because I'm about to spoil the hell out of one of the biggest moments in the film.
I'm serious. Stop it, now. Go get the film, watch it, then come back. You'll understand, trust me.
The film climaxes on what can be no better explained than by the application of the sadly cliche phraseology of "a moment of clarity". Not just for the for the character who experiences it, but for the audience, the creator, and I suspect a bit of the real life chef, Mr. Keller, who created the dish that sparks it.
The ominous, vampire-like restaurant critic is served the titular dish, with Remy the rat's (and real life chef Thomas Keller's) particular spin. We see him take a bite, and then suddenly, he is instantly transported back in time, to his childhood, standing in the doorway with a sad look on his face, his mother, smiling back, and comforting him with a bowl of simple ratatouille.
All in an instant, transported by memory to a better place, a better time, simply through the gentle touch of a chef, bringing to life a seemingly simple, unimpressive dish, simultaneously new and remarkable, and yet also old and familiar.
This is the power of truly great food. And this is why Ratatouille is one of the most incredible pieces of cinema I have ever seen, because in that brief scene, more than any other in a line of well-crafted moments and visual cues, we see it represented visually to a level of clarity I wouldn't have thought possible in the medium. So much is conveyed in such a brief, yet powerful image, and it seems to bely a level of understanding that I was simply floored by.
Setting aside my snarky, cynic's facade a moment, I must humbly admit that scene literally makes my cry just thinking about it. Its like someone reached right in my chest and found that spark that makes me want to do what I do, and thrust it on screen, and then comforts me softly just as Ego's mother comforts him.
The rest of the film is, in many ways, simply icing on the cake. The incredible verisimilitude, the clever writing, the animation, the sight gags, Collette, all really build the foundation for that final resolute moment in a way that few films manage.
So yes, it deserves an Oscar nod. At least a damn nomination. I'd consider it a victory for chefs and cooks everywhere if this film got the recognition it deserves, simply for managing to portray so well with so little, the passion and the joy that is food and cooking. This is an Important Movie(tm), if not for the rest of them, then at least for us.
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