6 Of The Best Foodie Films: the Oscars

Forage & Pasture celebrates the upcoming Oscars with its awards for the best scenes of cooking, eating, and messing with food from movies past and present.

BEST SPECIAL F(OOD) X

This award goes to… David Byrne’s TRUE STORIES

David Byrne’s film is inspired by stories he read in local newpapers he read on the road across America with Talking Heads. In this scene he’s invited to a family dinner where the parents haven’t spoken a word to each other for years. What happens is about the magic of food!

The scene: Dinner With The Culvers

BEST PLATE DESIGN IN A PICTURE

This award goes to… CHEF

This is an intimate scene from Jon Favreau’s film Chef: the Chef at his intense best works on his plating and experiments with combinations, the essence of food service at the highest level.

The best Food Porn category is always a firm favorite and a magic realist movie is our winner!

BEST FOOD PORN

LIKE WATER FOR CHOCOLATE

A potion including blood, rose petals and a mysterious vial of clear liquid is the secret sauce in this movie, and the results are I guess what every cook dreams of (a spoiler: one of the female guests is so moved she has to leave the table!):

The Food Fight category is fiercely competitive and spans a wide variety of genres, from middle school movies all the way to high school movies that you can find online, but once in a while there’s a stand out from the real world of grown ups, and this is such fun in the kitchen…

BEST FOOD FIGHT

This award goes to… FRIED GREEN TOMATOES

Enjoy.

BEST INDIE FOOD IN FILM

The Indie Food In Film Award tends to be dominated by the French, of course, with Chocolat and so on, but we like the outsiders in this category.

A hotly debated winner is: WITHNAIL AND I

A British cult film by the amazing Bruce Robinson wins this year with his advice on how to cook a chicken. Withnail and I was the breakout role for Downton Abbey’s Richard E Grant and is about a couple of out of work actors in the 60’s in England going on holiday ‘by mistake’. Perhaps it’s an acquired taste this, so please forgive us if you find it not so amusing…

The Scene: “How To Cook A Chicken”

BEST PICTURE

This award goes to… THE HELP

Making and Sharing Deep Fried Chicken

Two universes collide and collude when Jessica Chastain’s Celia learns from Oscar-winning Octavia Spencer’s Minny about cooking Southern fried chicken in this scene. When they share the meal together, the characters begin a journey of understanding – see the film if you haven’t already!