Food Movies: 12 Films About Cooking, Eating and the People at the Table

Directed by Juzo Itami

Two truck drivers help a widow turn her failing noodle shop into the best ramen place in town, in a story that borrows the shape of a Western. It keeps breaking off into short sketches about food, some funny, some odd, some sexual. The lesson on how to eat ramen properly is famous.

Directed by Gabriel Axel

In a strict Lutheran village on the Danish coast, a French refugee who has worked for years as a cook for two elderly sisters wins the lottery and spends it all on one extravagant French dinner for the congregation, who have agreed not to enjoy it. Quiet, then quietly joyful.

Directed by Campbell Scott, Stanley Tucci

Two Italian brothers run a restaurant on the Jersey Shore in the 1950s: one a perfectionist chef, the other trying to keep the business alive. Everything rides on one night and a famous guest. The timpano is the star. The final scene, a wordless omelette, is perfect.

Directed by Ang Lee

The opening ten minutes, a master chef preparing a Sunday banquet, is one of the great cooking sequences on film. The rest is a warm comedy about his three daughters and their secrets, served over those weekly dinners.

Directed by Brad Bird

A rat with a great sense of taste teams up with a hopeless kitchen boy at a famous Paris restaurant, steering him by pulling his hair. The criticʼs first bite of ratatouille, and what it does to him, is one of Pixarʼs best scenes. For children and for anyone who cooks.

Directed by Nora Ephron

Two true stories side by side: Julia Child learning French cooking in 1950s Paris, and a New York office worker in 2002 who decides to cook every recipe in Juliaʼs book in a year and blog about it. Meryl Streepʼs Julia is the reason to watch; it is light and funny.

Directed by David Gelb

A documentary about Jiro Ono, then in his eighties, who ran a ten-seat sushi counter in a Tokyo subway station, and about his eldest son, who has been waiting decades to take over. It is about work and obsession as much as fish. Only 81 minutes.

Directed by Ritesh Batra

Mumbaiʼs lunchbox delivery system almost never makes mistakes, but one day a young wifeʼs carefully cooked lunch reaches a lonely widower about to retire. They start writing notes to each other inside the tiffin. Small, funny and a little sad.

Directed by Jon Favreau

A Los Angeles chef quits after a public fight with a critic goes viral, buys a food truck in Miami and drives it home across the country with his young son and his line cook, selling Cuban sandwiches. Low stakes and very enjoyable. You will want a grilled cheese.

Directed by Naomi Kawase

A tired man running a small dorayaki stall hires an elderly woman who makes a far better sweet bean paste than he does. Business picks up, until rumors spread about her past. Gentle, set among cherry blossoms, and sadder than it first seems.

Directed by Yim Soon-rye

A young woman gives up on exams and city jobs in Seoul and goes back to her empty childhood home in the countryside, where she spends a year cooking from the garden and seeing old friends. Almost no plot, lots of food. Based on a Japanese manga that was also filmed in Japan.

Directed by Tran Anh Hung

In 1880s France, a celebrated gourmet and the cook who has worked with him for twenty years make meals together, and he keeps asking her to marry him. The first half hour is one long, almost wordless session of cooking in a country kitchen. Slow and sensual, directed by Tran Anh Hung, who also made The Scent of Green Papaya.