An Extra Slice: Movie time with a little zest

The Bear, The Menu & Barbie

Do you have a particular interest in watching movies, perhaps spotting a favourite wine or cookery book on the shelf or seeing a famous park from your city in a scene? For me, it’s looking out for citrus and lemon cooking action.

Carmey and Sydney (l) in a high octane kitchen scene from series 1 of The Bear

This week alone, I’ve spotted lemons in the Disney channel’s super successful series The Bear. The story is set in a claustrophobic, fictional Chicago-based Italian-beef restaurant and I was finishing up series one, just as series two landed. In this particular scene, chef Sydney is at home cooking a delicate sea bass for her colleague chef Marcus, zesting and squeezing lemon over the dish. Sydney has a memory of working in a kitchen where the chef would only let her zest lemons, for eight months! It took a few episodes to get my bearings and fall in love with Carmey and his brigade, but now I’m a fully signed-up Yogi. (Pic shows Carmey, [right] and Sydney in a high energy scene of The Bear, series 1).

Second on the streaming channel, was the agonisingly tense, butt-clenching ride that saw Ralph Fiennes (chef Julian Slowik) star in The Menu alongside Anya Taylor-Joy (Margot) and Nicholas Hoult (Tyler) playing a mismatched couple at the heart of the story. 

Lemon Caviar from The Menu

The film and people’s live unravel over multi-course dinner which starts with one of chef Slowik’s ‘classics’ according to extreme foodie Tyler. It’s an amuse bouche of a single oyster, covered in a foamy mignonette emulsion and lemon caviar, topped with a single oyster leaf (Mertensia Maritima, aka Sea Bluebell). The caviar, as the sceptical Margot points out, is made of algae, or pond weed!

As an aside, 3-Michelin-starred chef Dominique Crenn of San Fransisco’s Atelier Crenn helped with food styling as chief technical consultant, while all the chefs working in The Menu’s fictional Hawthorne restaurant has commercial kitchen experience. David Gelb, creator of the ground-breaking Chef’s Table, helped with direction.

Some reviewers get hung up about the two shows not representing reality, forgetting that this is TV drama and not documentary. Both give pause for thought, and suggest that as customers, we be more mindful of what and why we eat out.

And how could I not mention the new Barbie movie, in its first box office smashing week. While I have yet to see the movie, I did notice that her YouTube channel has delightful cooking tutorials including this one for Lemon Cake.

Please share your cinematic, culinary memories in the comments below :)

Bruce McMichael
Writer, Podcaster, Educator
Website: www.thelemongrove.net
Twitter:  @lemonbites
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Disclosure: I am an affiliate of Bookshop.org