10 Movies a foodie must watch

I am a movie geek. I could watch great movies 24/7. Too bad they aren’t making good ones, like they used to so I have to browse a good amount of time until I am satisfied. And then I share my findings with friends on Facebook.

I also love to cook. So whenever I find a great movie that treats the subject of fine dining as it’s the most important thing in the world, I get crazy excited. There aren’t many out there and I’ve seen some bad ones too. I am sharing the ones I loved with you, in no particular order. Enjoy watching!

Hortense Laborie, a renowned chef from Perigord, is astonished when the President of the Republic appoints her his personal cook, responsible for creating all his meals at the Elysée 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.

Julia Child’s story of her start in the cooking profession is intertwined with blogger Julie Powell’s 2002 challenge to cook all the recipes in Child’s first book.

With dreams of becoming a chef, a culinary genius in the form of a rat, makes an unusual alliance with a young kitchen worker at a famed restaurant.

In a small town where life has been the same for 100 years, a war is about to break out between the tranquility of tradition and the fear of change. The shock of the new, the excitement of letting go, the dangers of denying people joy and the temptations of intolerance are aroused by a chocolaterie’s delectable sweets in CHOCOLAT, a comic fable about the magical power of indulging in pleasure.

Master chef Kate Armstrong lives her life like she runs her kitchen at a trendy Manhattan eatery—with a no-nonsense intensity that both captivates and intimidates everyone around her. Kate’s perfectionist nature is put to the test when she “inherits” her nine-year-old niece Zoe, while contending with a brash new sous-chef who joins her staff. High-spirited and freewheeling, Nick Palmer couldn’t be more different from Kate, yet the chemistry between them is undeniable.

A woman starts her life over with a new home in a new land in this romantic comedy drama. Frances is a writer in her mid-’30s who feels emotionally derailed after her divorce. Unhappy and unable to write, she isn’t sure what to do with her life, and her best friend Patti decides she needs some time away from her problems. With that in mind, Patti gives Frances a ticket for a two-week tour of the Tuscany region of Italy; while there, Frances finds a dilapidated old villa. Charmed by the warmth, beauty, and charm of the small town of Cortona, Frances impulsively decides to buy the villa, thinking she can fix it up herself. The home proves to be more of a handyman’s special than she imagined, but as she slowly gets the hang of household maintenance, Italian style, Frances develops a new confidence as she makes friends with her neighbors and finds love with a handsome local named Marcello.

A young boy wins a tour through the most magnificent chocolate factory in the world, led by the world’s most unusual candy maker.

Jacky, a self-trained cook with haute-cuisine ambitions, gets canned from a series of menial cooking jobs. His pregnant girlfriend Beatrice tries to halt their financial meltdown by arranging a handyman position for him at an old folks home, but he can’t resist the siren call of the kitchen. Meanwhile, Alexandre, chef of the three-star establishment Cargo Lagarde, faces a crisis of a different sort. Stanislaw, the son of his retired business partner, wants him to cut costs and introduce molecular gastronomy.

Uptight French chef Sara Westbrook gets fired up when her upscale café, Chez Varenne, is suddenly overshadowed by a new restaurant moving in next door run by a group of rowdy firemen. Led by handsome former fire fighter Gill Callahan and his friend Danny, The Five Alarm Grill is soon a big success while Sara and Patsy, her pastry chef, struggle to bring in customers.

Romantics Anonymous tells the story of Angélique, a gifted chocolate-maker whose uncontrollable shyness prevents her from acknowledging her talents. Struggling chocolatier Jean-René, who also suffers from a similar case of awkward bashfulness that threatens to drown his company, hires Angelique as his new sales associate. Realizing she’s attracted to her boss, Angelique decides to anonymously develop a new line of chocolates to save the company.

And what’s a top 10 without extras? Here we have a great romance in the tradition of classic Hollywood comedies of the Depression Era. Simply Irresistible also presses into service the food-obsessed magical realism of Like Water for Chocolate. Amanda Shelton, the chef at Southern Cross, a trendy Tribeca restaurant she inherited from her legendary mother. Not the most inspired of culinary artists, Amanda is running the establishment into the ground, until a cab-driving, Cupid-like guardian angel intervenes with a magical crab that puts Amanda in the path of slick spin master Tom Bartlett.

More foodie movies here.