The film is based on a true story. A local countryside cook in the DDR (Communist East Germany) is bored with making Schweinebraten and Semmelknödeln, dreaming of exotic dishes. He starts by making japanese food for his friends, but eventually becomes a sensation and even a diplomatic asset for DDR-Japanese relations.
The First Supper is a about a family reuniting for a meal, following a funeral’s last rites and cremation. The widow is supposed to cook the food for that meal but, according to the will of the deceased, there is nothing to eat but eggs. So, they eat eggs, reminisce, re-bond with each other and talk some more, even laugh as they recall the deceased, and his ways and their better days.
In Love Is A Piece Of Cake Jessie Dale is a third generation baker who loves her cake shop more than anything in the world. When developers threaten to buy her building and force her out, she must do all she can to save her bakery, all while juggling a blossoming romance with her client’s brother.
The Longevity Film investigates the complex topic of ageing by documenting the longest lived, healthiest & happiest cultures from around the world.
When Odysseus left Troy it took him ten years to get back to his home in Ithaca. Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon have only six days on their own personal odyssey in The Trip To Greece.
After jaunts through northern England and Italy, Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon embark on another deliciously deadpan culinary road trip. This time around, the guys head to Spain to sample the best of the country’s gastronomic offerings in between rounds of their hilariously off-the-cuff banter. Over plates of pintxos and paella, the pair exchange barbs and their patented celebrity impressions, as well as more serious reflections on what it means to settle into middle age. As always, the locales are breathtaking, the cuisine to die for, and the humor delightfully devilish.
The Trip to Italy is a 2014 British comedy film. Rob Brydon has been commissioned by a newspaper to go on a road trip through Italy from Piedmont to Capri, partly following in the footsteps of the great Romantic poets. Steve Coogan joins him, and as they journey through the beautiful Italian countryside, they talk about life, love and their careers.
The Trip is a 2010 British television sitcom series and feature film starring Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon as fictionalised versions of themselves on a restaurant tour of northern England.
Sadie returns home for Christmas after her boyfriend cancels their Holiday plans, only to find out her parents have sold the family business. Begrudgingly Sadie agrees to teach the new owner everything she knows about chocolate – and falls in love with him.
With millions of believers worldwide, The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster is the world’s fastest growing religion. Mr. Henderson, the Prophet of the Pastafarian Church, argues that a Flying Spaghetti Monster (FSM) created the universe a few thousand years ago.
The Restaurant of Love, Regained. Returning home from work, Rinko is shocked to find her flat is totally empty. Gone are her TV set, fridge, and above all, her boyfriend. She has no choice but to go back to her native village and her mother, on which she turned her back 10 years ago. There she decides to open a very special restaurant.
Growing The Big One is about a small town’s annual pumpkin growing contest which brings big changes for big city radio host Emma Silver (Shannon Doherty), who decides to pay off her late grandfather’s debts by winning this year’s $50,000 grand prize. In the process she strikes sparks with a handsome neighbor (Kavan Smith) who could teach her a lot about farming — and love!
Hae-jin, a chef who suddenly broke up through Kakao, left for Skopelos, Greece, the same island he promised to come with for the summer vacation. Hae-jin opened a Korean restaurant called Farewell Restaurant. For couples’ last farewell before their breakups, they play music and comfort them. And then one day, Eleni, a Greek girl came… and he falls in love again.
PIZZA, A LOVE STORY will explain how this one little town in one of the smallest (US) states just happen to have three of the greatest pizza places in the world…all within a few blocks of each other.
Death by Potato. When a boy invites 7 friends over to his Murder Mystery Themed Birthday Party, halfway through the evening, someone actually gets murdered, spurring on a full blown murder mystery.
Introduced by award-winning Singaporean filmmaker Eric Khoo (“Ramen Teh”, “12 Storeys”), Food Lore, an eight-episode series from HBO Asia, explores human emotions with narratives inspired by Asian cuisines.
First Cow is about a taciturn loner and skilled cook (John Magaro) who has travelled west and joined a group of fur trappers in Oregon Territory, though he only finds true connection with a Chinese immigrant (Orion Lee) also seeking his fortune. Soon, the two collaborate on a successful business…
Food is the most powerful medium available to us for thinking in a connected way about the numerous dilemmas we face today. For countless millennia, food has shaped our bodies, lives, societies and world. Its effects are so widespread and profound that most of us can’t even see them; yet it is as familiar to us as our own face. Sitopia starts with a plate of food and travels out to the universe. Its structure thus consists of a series of overlapping scales, in which food is always central. Food animates our bodies, homes and societies, city and country, nature and time – seven scales that form the chapters in the book
In Midnight Diner 2, a literary editor is mourning the death of one of her writers, a soba noodle restaurant owner wonders why her son won’t take over her business and an elderly woman is tricked by scammers into paying them millions of yen for her son.
Deconstructing the Mediterranean diet – fiction: a critical review on a 60 year-old fallacy. If the suggestion of an East China Sea Diet is unacceptable, how is the suggestion of a Mediterranean Diet reasonable?
Based on a 2009 TV Series of the same title (which in turn is based on a 2006 Japanese manga comic book of the same title – Shinya Shokudo by Yaro Abe) the Midnight Diner is about a cook who runs a small eatery at the backstreets of Tokyo’s Shinjuku Square, open only from Midnight to 7 am.
The Furthest End Awaits is one of the sweetest, most humane films we watched in quite some time. Misaki is a coffee expert roaster who returns to the hometown of her father, after he is reported to be dead. There she opens a coffee shop on the isolated beach. A relationship with her neighbour Eriko and her children evolves.
Tsatsiki, Dad and the Olive War is a Swedish kids’ movie partly shot in Crete, Greece. There are no English language subtitles in the trailer, but, well, you don’t need them really. 🙂
Alma is a 20-year-old girl and adores her grandfather, a man who has not spoken for years. When the elderly man also refuses to eat, the girl decides to recover the millenary tree that the family sold against his will. In order to succeed, she needs to count on her uncle, a victim of the crisis, her friend Rafa, and her whole town to help her. The problem is to find out where in Europe the olive tree is.
The Midnight Diner – Tokyo Stories is about a cook who runs a small eatery at the backstreets of Tokyo’s Shinjuku Square, open only from Midnight to 7 am. The cook is known only as “Master” and his specialty is that he will cook whatever a customer wants, for as long as he has the ingredients. The series is an anthology of human relationship stories and resolutions are often facilitated by the “Master” of the Midnight Diner.
An uplifting, feel-good romantic comedy from Zimbabwe, Cook Off is a film about falling in love, with food.
H20: The Molecule That Made Us is a 3-hour PBS series, airing in three one hour episodes. The film dramatically reveals how water underpins every aspect of our existence.
Based on the best selling book and true story of William Kamkwamba, The Boy Who Harnessed The Wind is about a thirteen year old boy in Malawi, Africa who against all odds invents an unconventional way to save his family and village from famine.
A Mexican-American master chef and father to three daughters has lost his taste for food but not for life.
In a restaurant run by two Italian immigrants, the tables sit empty despite the extraordinary talents of Primo the chef Tony Shalhoub, “Monk”) and the ambitious efforts of his brother Secondo (Stanley Tucci, The Devil Wears Prada). A celebrity night at their restaurant promises not only to turn their business around but to change their lives.
Self-made businessman Harry Papadopoulos has got it all; a mansion house; awards and a super rich lifestyle. However, when the banks call in their huge loans. Harry and his family lose everything in an instant – except the dormant and forgotten Three Brothers Fish & Chip Shop half owned by Harry’s larger than life brother Spiros who’s been estranged from the family for years.
Known for his wit, humour, and profound insight, Billy Collins is one of the best-selling and most beloved contemporary poets in the United States.
Mystery abounds when it is discovered that, one by one, the greatest Chefs in Europe are being killed. Food critics and the (many) self-proclaimed greatest Chefs in Europe demand the mystery be solved.
Take one rich, eccentric, morbidly obese gourmand; add a beautiful, sexy dessert chef; mix with them a fast-food entrepreneur; and you’ve got the fixings for a stylish treat.
TODAY’S SPECIAL is a heartwarming comedy with a culinary flavor, inspired by Aasif Mandvi’s Obie Award winning play “Sakina’s Restaurant.” In this super-feel-good foodie comedy, young Manhattan chef Samir rediscovers his heritage and his passion for life through the enchanting art of cooking Indian food.
Featuring best-selling author, activist and public figure Maude Barlow and her crusade to have water declared a human right, protected from privatization, WATER ON THE TABLE explores Canada’s relationship to its freshwater, arguably its most precious natural resource.
Three unlikely rivals will do whatever it takes to beat the competition in this quirky and outrageous comedy about love, sex, winning, and most of all, butter.
Health expert Vinnie Tortorich exposes the history behind widespread myths and lies regarding healthy eating, fat and weight loss.
High fashion, romance and love… revolving around a plate of omelette. (That’s right. 🙂 )
“In his book, Big farms make big flu: dispatches on influenza, agribusiness, and the nature of science, evolutionary ecologist Rob Wallace calls on virology, phylogeography, political ecology, mathematical modelling, and economics to tackle those questions by taking us on a rich and fascinating journey through the multiple layers of causality in the emergence of disease.
In Skirt Day (Rokjesdag), Spring is in the air and the film’s characters are attending a cooking course for singles – and you can (sort of) imagine the rest.
Fat Fiction swings from one dietery extreme (food-pyramid diet, low fat) to the other (Keto diet, full fat), without taking into account the middle dietary ground most of us live by.
A really funny clip from the French film “Wasabi”, where the protagonist, Hubert Fiorentini (Jean Reno), eats a whole serving of wasabi at a Japanese restaurant without flinching.
When martial arts meet culinary arts… nothing gets more hilarious! KUNG FU CHEFS revolves around one master chef training an up-and-coming chef for the championship title. However, this contest isn’t only about food.
Nutritional losses did not begin 50 or 100 years ago, she has learned, but thousands of years earlier when we first abandoned our native diet of wild plants and game and began to domesticate animals and grow food in the first primitive gardens. Unwittingly, the choices we made about how to feed our livestock and what to plant in our gardens reduced the amount of vitamins, minerals, protein, fiber, healthy fats, and antioxidants in the human diet, which compromised our ability to fight disease and enjoy optimum health.
What if everything we’ve been told about saturated fat is fiction? And what if the “Low-Fat, heart-healthy” diet is one of the worst health recommendations in history?
Fantastic Fungi, directed by Louie Schwartzberg, is a consciousness-shifting film that takes us on an immersive journey through time and scale into the magical earth beneath our feet, an underground network that can heal and save our planet.
“After Truth: Disinformation and the Cost of Fake News” is an HBO documentary examining “fake news,” its victims, its perpetrators, and its consequences.
The award-winning film Modified follows a personal and poignant mother-daughter investigative journey into the world of genetically modified foods (GMOs). Filmed over 10 years and anchored in the filmmaker’s relationship to her mother (a gardener and food activist who battled cancer during the film’s production), the film asks why GMOs are not labelled on foods in the United States and Canada, despite being labelled in 64 countries around the world.
MORE THAN HONEY is the provocative yet touching tale of what may happen to mankind if bees keep dying. It is a 2M Euro budget documentary directed by Oscar nominated director Markus Imhoof and by the creators of “LET´S MAKE MONEY”& “WE FEED THE WORLD”.
THE IRISH PUB is a celebration of the greatest institution in Irish society, the pub or more specifically the traditional Irish publicans who run them. The characters in this exceptionally endearing film all run and own pubs that have been in their families for generations and it is through their warmth, wit and wisdom that we gain an insight into the heart and soul of THE IRISH PUB.
There is a near-consensus among health authorities that whole, unrefined foods represent a fundamental truth in support of individual health and well-being. The whole foods movement is a common sense approach that is…
The Connection is a film about how frontier research is proving that there is a direct connection between your mind and your health.
The Junk food Experiment. In this 90-minute programme, six famous faces have agreed to put their bodies on the line and become guinea pigs in an extreme scientific experiment to find out what our junk food lifestyle is actually doing to us.
“A Touch of Spice” is a story about a young Greek boy (Fanis) growing up in Istanbul, whose grandfather, a culinary philosopher and mentor,teaches him that both food and life require a little salt to give them flavor; they both require a touch of spice. Fanis grows up to become an excellent cook and uses his cooking skills to spice up the lives of those around him. 35 years later he leaves Athens and travels back to his birthplace of Istanbul to reunite with his grandfather and his first love; he travels back only to realize that he forgot to put a little bit of spice in his own life.
Apicius – Cookery and Dining In Imperial Rome. The present first translation into English of the ancient cookery book dating back to Imperial Roman times known as the Apicius book is herewith presented to antiquarians, friends of the Antique as well as to gastronomers, friends of good cheer.
I Am Love. Emma left Russia to live with her husband in Italy. Now a member of a powerful industrial family, she is the respected mother of three, but feels unfulfilled. One day, Antonio, a talented chef and her son’s friend, makes her senses kindle.
What’s With Wheat – documentary. It investigates the growing epidemic of wheat intolerance, and why after eating wheat for thousands of years, it has been linked to so many health problems.
Jewish culture reflects the heart of a vital ethnic history. As that culture continues to shift and adapt alongside mainstream America, delicatessen food—as its name suggests—remains a beloved communal delicacy. In Houston, Texas, third-generation deli man Ziggy Gruber has built arguably the finest delicatessen restaurant in the U.S. His story—augmented by the stories of iconic delis such as Katz’s, 2nd Avenue Deli, Nate ‘n Al, Carnegie, and the Stage—embodies a tradition indelibly linked to its savory, nostalgic foods.
Le Dinner de Cons. For Pierre Brochant and his friends, Wednesday is “Idiots’ Day”. The idea is simple: each person has to bring along an idiot. The one who brings the most spectacular idiot wins the prize. Tonight, Brochant is ecstatic. He has found a gem. The ultimate idiot. “A world champion idiot!” Meet François Pignon, a lowly accountant at the Finance Ministry, a man devoted to his constructions made of match sticks… What Brochant doesn’t know is that Pignon is a real jinx, a past master in the art of bringing on catastrophes…
A Cantonese street cook and his chief rival, a French-trained Michelin-starred chef, discover they have a lot in common as they prepare for a world-famous culinary competition. An international culinary competition becomes a battleground between rival cooks, one famous for his Cantonese street food and the other a Michelin-starred chef trained in France. But their rivalry takes an unexpected turn when they discover a common foe and combine their skills in a fusion of East and West.
Tita’s strong emotions have a lasting affect on those around her. Tita is passionately in love with Pedro, but her controlling mother forbids her from marrying him. When Pedro marries her sister, Tita throws herself into her cooking and discovers she can transfer her emotions through the food she prepares, infecting all who eat it with her intense heartbreak.
Chocolat. A woman and her daughter open a chocolate shop in a small French village that shakes up the rigid morality of the community.
In one of Paris’ finest restaurants, Remy, a determined young rat, dreams of becoming a renowned French chef. Torn between his family’s wishes and his true calling, Remy and his pal Linguini set in motion a hilarious chain of events that turns the City of Lights upside down.
A culinary legend provides a frustrated office worker with a new recipe for life in Julie & Julia, the true stories of how Julia Child’s (Meryl Streep) life and cookbook inspired fledgling writer Julie Powell (Amy Adams) to whip up 524 recipes in 365 days and introduce a new generation to the magic of French cooking. Stanley Tucci (The Devil Wears Prada) co-stars in director Nora Ephron’s delicious comedy about joy, obsession and butter. Bon appétit!
The life of a top chef changes when she becomes the guardian of her young niece. The American remake of the German film “Mostly Martha”.
Soul Kitchen. Winner Special Jury Prize Venice Film Festival 2009. Young restaurant owner Zinos is down on his luck. His girlfriend Nadine has moved to Shanghai, his Soul Kitchen customers are boycutting the new gourmet chef, and he’s having back trouble! Things start looking up when the hip crowd embraces his revamped culinary concept, but that doesn’t mend Zinos’s broken heart.
Eat, Pray, Love. Liz Gilbert (Julia Roberts) is a modern woman on a quest to marvel at and travel the world while rediscovering and reconnecting with her true inner self in Eat Pray Love. At a crossroads after a divorce, Gilbert takes a year-long sabbatical from her job and steps uncharacteristically out of her comfort zone, risking everything to change her life. In her wondrous and exotic travels, she experiences the simple pleasure of nourishment by eating in Italy; the power of prayer in India, and, finally and unexpectedly, the inner peace and balance of love in Bali.
The Lunchbox. Winner of Critics’ Week Viewers Choice Award at the Cannes Film Festival 2013. Middle class housewife Ila is trying once again to add some spice to her marriage, this time through her cooking. She desperately hopes that this new recipe will finally arouse some kind of reaction from her neglectful husband. Unknowing to her is that the special lunchbox she prepared has been mistakenly delivered to an office worker Saajan, a lonely man on the verge of retirement.
Chef Carl Casper (Jon Favreau) suddenly quits his job at a prominent Los Angeles restaurant after refusing to compromise his creative integrity for its controlling owner (Dustin Hoffman), he is left to figure out what’s next. Finding himself in Miami, he teams up with his ex-wife (Sofia Vergara), his friend (John Leguizamo) and his son to launch a food truck. Taking to the road, Chef Carl goes back to his roots to reignite his passion for the kitchen — and zest for life and lo
Burnt. Adam Jones is a Chef who destroyed his career with drugs and diva behavior. He cleans up and returns to London, determined to redeem himself by spearheading a top restaurant that can gain three Michelin stars.
Jacky Bonnot, 32, a fan of haute cusine and with a definite talent, dreams of success and opening a great and famous restaurant. However the financial situation of he and his wife obliges him to accept menial cooking jobs that lead nowhere… Up until the day he crosses paths with Alexandre Vauclair, a renowned chef, whose comfortable situation is endangered by the financial group that owns his restaurants…
Chef – Hindi film. The film is a unique tale of a journey that Roshan Kalra (played by Saif Ali Khan) undertakes to find out his true priorities and source of happiness. It’s a story of food and love and family and togetherness. And that of a father’s rediscovery of the bond with his son.
Haute Cuisine. Hortense Laborie, a renown chef from the Périgord, is astonished when the President of the Republic appoints her his personal cook, responsible for creating all his meals at the Élysée Palace. Despite jealous resentment from the other kitchen staff, Hortense quickly establishes herself, thanks to her indomitable spirit. The authenticity of her cooking soon seduces the President, but the corridors of power are littered with traps…
Romantics Anonymous – Les émotifs anonymes. A surprise hit in France, the delectable comedy ROMANTICS ANONYMOUS tells the story of Angelique Delange, an unemployed but gifted chocolate-maker with a lifelong case of uncontrollable shyness that prevents her from properly sharing her confectionery talents.
Babette’s Feast. Adapted with great sensitivity and invention from Isak Dinesen’s short story (itself inspired by The Tempest), this truly lovely tale of everyday passion, magic and miracles is a delicacy to savour. Relocating the story from a bourgeois Norwegian port to a remote, windswept Jutland hamlet so steeped in Lutheran spirituality it feels like something out of a Dreyer film, Axel traces the strange chain of events that led to the two elderly daughters of a famously pious pastor taking on, as their cook, a Parisienne who was until the advent of the Commune one of the city’s most celebrated chefs.
Eat Drink Man Woman. Directed by Ang Lee and starring Sihung Lung, Winston Chao, Chao-jung Chen, Lester Chit-Man Chan, Yu Chen. The film tells the story of a retired and widowed Chinese master chef Chu (Si Hung Lung) and his family living in modern day Taipei, Taiwan. At the start of the film, he lives with his three attractive daughters, all of whom are unattached. As the film progresses, each of the daughters encounters new men in their lives.
Tampopo. Two Japanese milk-truck drivers (Tsutomu Yamazaki, Ken Watanabe) help a restaurant owner (Nobuko Miyamoto) learn how to cook great noodles.
Lost Feast : Culinary Extinction and the Future of Food. When we humans love foods, we love them a lot. In fact, we have often eaten them into extinction, whether it is the megafauna of the Paleolithic world or the passenger pigeon of the last century. In Lost Feast, food expert Lenore Newman sets out to look at the history of the foods we have loved to death and what that means for the culinary paths we choose for the future.
The Medieval Kitchen : Recipes from France and Italy. The Medieval Kitchen is a delightful work in which historians Odile Redon, Françoise Sabban, and Silvano Serventi rescue from dark obscurity the glorious cuisine of the Middle Ages. Medieval gastronomy turns out to have been superb—a wonderful mélange of flavor, aroma, and color. Expertly reconstructed from fourteenth- and fifteenth-century sources and carefully adapted to suit the modern kitchen, these recipes present a veritable feast.
Le Miel L’art des abeilles, l’or de la ruche. Symbole de douceur, de prospérité et d’abondance, le miel est le fruit du travail titanesque accompli par les abeilles. Découvrez l’histoire de ces travailleuses infatigables, leur morphologie, leur cycle de vie, de même que l’organisation de la colonie et son mystérieux langage. Laissez-vous surprendre par la diversité des plantes et des fleurs donnant aux miels qui en sont issus des couleurs et des saveurs si riches et si distinctes
The Language of Baklava : A Memoir. From the acclaimed author of Crescent, called “radiant, wise, and passionate” by the Chicago Tribune, here is a vibrant, humorous memoir of growing up with a gregarious Jordanian father who loved to cook.
Extra Virginity : The Sublime and Scandalous World of Olive Oil. For millennia, fresh olive oil has been one of life’s necessities-not just as food but also as medicine, a beauty aid, and a vital element of religious ritual. Today’s researchers are continuing to confirm the remarkable, life-giving properties of true extra virgin olive oil. But what if this symbol of health and purity has become deeply corrupt?
Ever wondered about… Medieval Cookery? Here’s a list of medieval food books to guide your way. Curated by MedievalCookery.com
A Brief History of Medicine : From Hippocrates to Gene Therapy. Paul Strathern steers us skillfully through the maze of discoveries, diseases, and wrong turns that have made medicine what it is today–super efficient, high tech, and increasingly costly. “A Brief History of Medicine” offers an accessible history of the arguments, missteps, and dumb luck that led to the world’s most important medical breakthroughs–from anatomy, grave robbing, the plague, and germ theory to vaccination, quackery, microorganisms, and penicillin.
The Classical Cookbook. The daily life of classical Greece and Rome, although separated from us by 2000 years, can be recreated in almost photographic detail. The Classical Cookbook is the first book of its kind, exploring the daily culture of the Mediterranean through the center of its social life–food and drink.
Tastes of Byzantium. For centuries, the food and culinary delights of the Byzantine empire – centred on Constantinople – have captivated the west, although it appeared that very little information had been passed down to us. Andrew Dalby’s “Tastes of Byzantium” now reveals in astonishing detail, for the first time, what was eaten in the court of the Eastern Roman Empire – and how it was cooked.
Let them eat dirt. In the 150 years since we discovered that microbes cause infectious diseases, we’ve battled to keep them at bay. But a recent explosion of scientific knowledge has led to undeniable evidence that early exposure to these organisms is beneficial to our children’s well-being. It turns out that our current emphasis on hyper-cleanliness and poor diets are taking a toll on our children’s lifelong health
100 million years of food. I wrote this book to examine the human diet in its vast entirety, including the viewpoints of biology, culture, medicine, and history. The book is currently a finalist for the 2016 Lane Anderson Award for Canadian science writing and the 2017 Taste Canada award for culinary narrative. I was a finalist for the 2017 Kobo Emerging Writer Award.
Gut : The Inside Story of Our Body’s Most Underrated Organ. A cheeky up-close and personal guide to the secrets and science of our digestive system. For too long, the gut has been the body’s most ignored and least appreciated organ, but it turns out that it’s responsible for more than just dirty work: our gut is at the core of who we are.
Food is Culture. Elegantly written by a distinguished culinary historian, Food Is Culture explores the innovative premise that everything having to do with food—its capture, cultivation, preparation, and consumption—represents a cultural act. Even the “choices” made by primitive hunters and gatherers were determined by a culture of economics (availability) and medicine (digestibility and nutrition) that led to the development of specific social structures and traditions.
Deep Nutrition : Why Your Genes Need Traditional Food. Deep Nutrition illustrates how our ancestors used nourishment to sculpt their anatomy, engineering bodies of extraordinary health and beauty. The length of our limbs, the shape of our eyes, and the proper function of our organs are all gifts of our ancestor’s collective culinary wisdom.
Death by Food Pyramid. Warning: Shock and outrage will grip you as you dive into this one-of-a-kind expose. Shoddy science, sketchy politics and shady special interests have shaped American Dietary recommendations and destroyed our nation s health over recent decades. The phrase Death by Food Pyramid isn’t shock-value sensationalism, but the tragic consequence of simply doing what we have been told to do by our own government and giant food profiteers in pursuit of health.
Fast Food Nation. In 2001, Fast Food Nation was published to critical acclaim and became an international bestseller. Eric Schlosser’s expose revealed how the fast food industry has altered the landscape of America, widened the gap between rich and poor, fueled an epidemic of obesity, and transformed food production throughout the world. The book changed the way millions of people think about what they eat and helped to launch today’s food movement.
Food : A Culinary History. When did we first serve meals at regular hours? Why did we begin using individual plates and utensils to eat? When did “cuisine” become a concept and how did we come to judge food by its method of preparation, manner of consumption, and gastronomic merit?
Food : The History of Taste. This richly illustrated book is the first to apply the discoveries of the new generation of food historians to the pleasures of dining and the culinary accomplishments of diverse civilizations, past and present.
Editor Paul Freedman has gathered essays by French, German, Belgian, American, and British historians to present a comprehensive, chronological history of taste from prehistory to the present day.
The Omnivore’s Dilemma : A Natural History of Four Meals.
In this groundbreaking book, one of America’s most fascinating, original, and elegant writers turns his own omnivorous mind to the seemingly straightforward question of what we should have for dinner. To find out, Pollan follows each of the food chains that sustain us—industrial food, organic or alternative food, and food we forage ourselves—from the source to a final meal, and in the process develops a definitive account of the American way of eating.
In Defence of Food : An Eater’s Manifesto. Food. There’s plenty of it around, and we all love to eat it. So why should anyone need to defend it?
Because most of what we’re consuming today is not food, and how we’re consuming it — in the car, in front of the TV, and increasingly alone — is not really eating.
Food Politics. We all witness, in advertising and on supermarket shelves, the fierce competition for our food dollars. In this engrossing exposé, Marion Nestle goes behind the scenes to reveal how the competition really works and how it affects our health.
Sapiens : A Brief History of Humankind.
Homo sapiens rules the world because it is the only animal that can believe in things that exist purely in its own imagination, such as gods, states, money and human rights.
The Secret Life of Bees. Set in South Carolina in 1964, The Secret Life of Bees tells the story of Lily Owens, whose life has been shaped around the blurred memory of the afternoon her mother was killed. When Lily’s fierce-hearted black “stand-in mother,” Rosaleen, insults three of the deepest racists in town, Lily decides to spring them both free. They escape to Tiburon, South Carolina – a town that holds the secret to her mother’s past. Taken in by an eccentric trio of black beekeeping sisters, Lily is introduced to their mesmerizing world of bees and honey, and the Black Madonna.
The Girl with No Shadow (Chocolat #2). The wind has always dictated Vianne Rocher’s every move, buffeting her from the French village of Lansquenet-sous-Tannes to the crowded streets of Paris. Cloaked in a new identity, that of widow Yanne Charbonneau, she opens a chocolaterie on a small Montmartre street, determined to still the wind at last and keep her daughters, Anouk and baby Rosette, safe. But the weather vane soon turns, and Zozie de l’Alba blows into their lives.
When in Doubt, Add Butter. From the New York Times bestselling author of “Shoe Addicts Anonymous” and “Always Something There to Remind Me” comes a delicious new novel about the search for true love and all the ingredients that go into it.
As far as Gemma is concerned, her days of dating are over. In fact, it’s her job to cater other peoples’ dates, and that’s just fine by her. At thirty-seven, she has her own business, working as a private chef, and her life feels full and secure. She’s got six steady clients that keep her hands full.
Pomegranate Soup. Beneath the holy mountain Croagh Patrick, in damp and lovely County Mayo, sits the small, sheltered village of Ballinacroagh. To the exotic Aminpour sisters, Ireland looks like a much-needed safe haven. It has been seven years since Marjan Aminpour fled Iran with her younger sisters, Bahar and Layla, and she hopes that in Ballinacroagh, a land of “crazed sheep and dizzying roads,” they might finally find a home.
The Particular Sadness Of Lemon Cake. The wondrous Aimee Bender conjures the lush and moving story of a girl whose magical gift is really a devastating curse.
On the eve of her ninth birthday, unassuming Rose Edelstein, a girl at the periphery of schoolyard games and her distracted parents’ attention, bites into her mother’s homemade lemon-chocolate cake and discovers she has a magical gift: she can taste her mother’s emotions in the cake. She discovers this gift to her horror, for her mother—her cheerful, good-with-crafts, can-do mother—tastes of despair and desperation. Suddenly, and for the rest of her life, food becomes a peril and a threat to Rose.
The Last Chinese Chef. This alluring novel of friendship, love, and cuisine brings the best-selling author of Lost in Translation and A Cup of Light to one of the great Chinese subjects: food. As in her previous novels, Mones’s captivating story also brings into focus a changing China — this time the hidden world of high culinary culture.
The Hundred Foot Journey. “That skinny Indian teenager has that mysterious something that comes along once a generation. He is one of those rare chefs who is simply born. He is an artist.”
And so begins the rise of Hassan Haji, the unlikely gourmand who recounts his life’s journey in Richard Morais’s charming novel, The Hundred-Foot Journey. Lively and brimming with the colors, flavors, and scents of the kitchen, The Hundred-Foot Journey is a succulent treat about family, nationality, and the mysteries of good taste.
The Passionate Epicure. In the classic French novel The Passionate Epicure, Marcel Rouff introduces Dodin-Bouffant, a character based loosely on Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, an infamous bachelor and epicure dedicated to the high arts: the art of food and the art of love.
The Love Goddess’ Cooking School. Holly Maguire’s grandmother Camilla was the Love Goddess of Blue Crab Island, Maine—a Milanese fortune-teller who could predict the right man for you, and whose Italian cooking was rumored to save marriages. Holly has been waiting years for her unlikely fortune: her true love will like sa cordula, an unappetizing old-world delicacy. But Holly can’t make a decent marinara sauce, let alone sa cordula. Maybe that’s why the man she hopes to marry breaks her heart. So when Holly inherits Camilla’s Cucinotta, she’s determined to forget about fortunes and love and become an Italian cooking teacher worthy of her grandmother’s legacy.
Five Quarters of the Orange. The novels of Joanne Harris are a literary feast for the senses. Five Quarters of the Orange represents Harris’s most complex and sophisticated work yet – a novel in which darkness and fierce joy come together to create an unforgettable story.
Chocolat. A timeless novel of a straitlaced village’s awakening to joy and sensuality – every page offers a description of chocolate to melt in the mouths of chocoholics, francophiles, armchair gourmets, cookbook readers, and lovers of passion everywhere.
The School of Essential Ingredients follows the lives of eight students who gather in Lillian’s Restaurant every Monday night for cooking class. It soon becomes clear, however, that each one seeks a recipe for something beyond the kitchen. Students include Claire, a young mother struggling with the demands of her family; Antonia, an Italian kitchen designer learning to adapt to life in America; and Tom, a widower mourning the loss of his wife to breast cancer. Chef Lillian, a woman whose connection with food is both soulful and exacting, helps them to create dishes whose flavor and techniques expand beyond the restaurant and into the secret corners of her students’ lives.
Like Water for Chocolate – Como Agua Para Chocolate. Earthy, magical, and utterly charming, this tale of family life in turn-of-the-century Mexico became a best-selling phenomenon with its winning blend of poignant romance and bittersweet wit.
My Life In France. The bestselling story of Julia’s years in France–and the basis for Julie & Julia, starring Meryl Streep and Amy Adams–in her own words.
Nathaniel’s Nutmeg. ON CHRISTMAS DAY, 1616, an English adventurer, Nathaniel Courthope, stepped ashore on a remote island in the East Indies on a most secret and dangerous mission. He had to persuade the head-hunting islanders of Run to grant a monopoly to England over their nutmeg, a fabulously valuable spice in Europe.
Heal. A documentary film that takes us on a scientific and spiritual journey where we discover that by changing one’s perceptions, the human body can heal itself. The latest science reveals that we are not victims of unchangeable genes, nor should we buy into a scary prognosis. The fact is we have more control over our health and life than we have been taught to believe. This film will empower you with a new understanding of the miraculous nature of the human body and the extraordinary healer within us all. HEAL not only taps into the brilliant mind’s of leading scientists and spiritual teachers, but follows three people on actual high stakes healing journeys. Healing can be extremely complex and deeply personal, but it can also happen spontaneously in a moment. Through these inspiring and emotional stories we find out what works, what doesn’t, and why.
Take Your Pills. The pressure to achieve more, do more, and be more is part of being human – and in the age of Adderall and Ritalin, achieving that can be as close as the local pharmacy. No longer just “a cure for excitable kids,” prescription stimulants are in college classrooms, on Wall Street, in Silicon Valley…any place “the need to succeed” slams into “not enough hours in the day.” But there are costs. In the insightful Netflix documentary TAKE YOUR PILLS, award-winning documentarian Alison Klayman (Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry) focuses on the history, the facts, and the pervasiveness of cognitive-enhancement drugs in our amped-up era of late-stage-capitalism.
Trattoria. A story can be a lot like cooking. Sometimes it doesn’t turn out as expected. A drama/comedy set in the exciting San Francisco restaurant scene, about a chef and his son that reconnect and heal their past through cooking.
Ramen Shop. Masato, a young Ramen chef, leaves his hometown in Japan to embark on a culinary journey to Singapore to find the truth about his past. He uncovers a lot more than family secrets and delicious recipes.
Bourek. In this humanistic comedy, set against the backdrop of economic crises and bad news, an extravagant international cast of characters meet, fight, and fall in love, while hiding from the end of the world and other calamities on the tiny Greek island of Khronos. Each one of them discovers something or someone that gives new meaning to their lives, helped in no small part by the food they share, especially the Mediterranean pastry Bourek.
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