Rachel Allen on the gut-punchingly evocative power of food in film

From Rocky’s five raw-egg breakfast to Paulie’s meticulous prison dinner in Goodfellas, Rachel Allen discusses the evocative power of food in film with Gemma Fullam

Rachel Allen is the ambassador for the Culinary Cinema strand at Cork International Film Festival. Picture: Joanne Murphy

The late, great chef and food writer, Anthony Bourdain, had a favourite film about food. “I think it’s quite simply the best food movie ever made,” he told Entertainment Weekly in 2011. The movie? A cartoon about a rodent chef. 

The acerbic New Yorker felt Ratatouille perfectly captured “a passionate love of food” on film, noting the cinema audience’s “audible surprise, delight, awe, and even a measure of enlightenment” on viewing the scene in which restaurant critic Anton Ego, upon tasting Remy the rat’s ratatouille, is transported back to boyhood and the comforting deliciousness of his mother’s cooking.