From boozy gummies with a movie twist to Ghibli-inspired bento boxes and a dish drawn from Midnight Diner, Bangalore’s chefs are cooking up immersive menus inspired by their favourite films
It’s not petits fours (bite-sized confectionery) that signal the end of the 11-course meal currently being served at Farmlore, a farm-to-table restaurant on the outskirts of Bangalore. Instead, guests are handed a little white box labelled ‘Bad Boy Gummies’. Inside are four tiny gummy bears, flavoured with whisky and vodka. Before popping them into your mouth, you’re encouraged to guess the name of a movie, with clues hidden in the box and its mildly boozy contents. Hint: it features Mark Wahlberg and a bong-loving animated character. The movie — and the clues — change from time to time.
There are scores of movies about food, chefs and restaurants, spanning genres — from the endearing Ratatouille (2007) and the Japanese Tampopo (1985), described as a ramen Western, to Ang Lee’s acclaimed Eat Drink Man Woman (1994), and Ritesh Batra’s Lunchbox (2013), the little gem of an Indian film. Now, chefs and restaurateurs are looking to movies, both as a starting point for creative expression and to attract diners with an engaging narrative.
Chefs’ personal connection
At Farmlore, for instance, a space they call Omniscience has been set up with a long table meant for community-style dining. Here, the menu will comprise dishes, each of which will be a clue to a movie title. Diners will play dumb charades between courses. “The idea is to go beyond just the food and make it fun and stimulating,” says Farmlore owner Kaushik Raju. Last Halloween, Farmlore created a meal built around The Menu, the horror comedy starring Ralph Fiennes. Dishes from the movie made it to the menu and the chefs also interpreted some of the scenes to present them as plates.
Lychee Ceviche on the menu of ParTTwo. Lychees that have a fleeting season become a ceviche because the fruit mimics the texture of cured fresh fish.
Chef Karan Upmanyu of ParTTwo, the no-concept restaurant, has taken the idea of Bruce Brown’s Endless Summer, the 1966 surf documentary about two surfers who chase the perfect wave across the globe, and crafted his most recent seasonal menu around it. Chefs almost always look to movies or TV shows they have a personal connection with while setting out to find menu inspirations from them.
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Chef Karan succumbed to the romance of the experience when he took surfing lessons on the West coast. “An everyday fish thali in a shack becomes special when you’re eating it there, with the salt in your hair and the sand between your toes,” he says. It’s that sense of place and adventure he aims to capture with his summer menu. “The origins of a menu lie in what’s available and in season at that point. Then it evolves to reflect various experiences I’ve accumulated, through travel, TV shows and movies,” he says.
Curated menus and meals
While there’s no direct reference to food in the surfing documentary, Chef Upmanyu found a parallel in the idea, and has collated on his menu the ways in which different parts of the world experience summer through food. On the ParTTwo menu, lychees that have a fleeting season become a ceviche because the fruit mimics the texture of cured fresh fish. The cut fruits sprinkled with nam pla wan (sweet and salty dipping sauce) and served in plastic bags on the streets of Bangkok find a place here with amla, star fruit and other seasonal fruits served in a pretty arrangement.
Earlier, when The Bear (2022) hit OTT platforms and became hugely popular for its BTS into a restaurant kitchen and its manic activity, Chef Upmanyu presented an entire menu based on the show at the Conservatory, the downtown culinary studio. He served Welcome Broth (beef consommé and Parisienne vegetables), Carmy’s Christmas Cannoli with stracciatella, parmesan and tobiko and Marcus’s Copenhagen Sundae. “When we first cooked them, the individual dishes turned out well and the entire menu came together in perfect cohesion,” he says. Clearly, there can be no force-fitting while curating meals in this particular way.
If the sense of adventure in a surfing documentary sparked Chef Karan’s culinary imagination, it is the place that food occupies in Korean and Japanese shows that inspired Chef Anumitra Ghosh Dastidar. The very concept of Bento Bento, her Asian restaurant, sprang from K-drama. During the lockdowns she binge-watched Korean serials. “While being engrossed in these shows, you get a sense of the central place food occupies in everyday life,” she says.
The poster of Studio Ghibli-inspire pop-up at Bento Bento
“I imagined Bento Bento to have the same unwavering focus. We deliberately underplayed design and décor elements. Those were merely parts of the space, the emptiness even, that hold the dining experience.” In this space with its bare walls, plain tables and collection of vintage bento boxes, Anumitra has curated special menus drawing from her love of Japanese cinema, TV and anime, giving her regular customers something new and fresh to savour.
Replicating the sensorial experience
The tribute to Studio Ghibli movies was a hit. Fans turned up to sample the special menu, some dressed like characters such as the protagonist from Kiki’s Delivery Service (1989). “I’ve been a Ghibli fan for many years. The Ghibli movies, especially those like Princess Mononoke (1997) and Grave of the Fireflies (1988), are more complex than K-drama; many of them take you on an intense journey through dream worlds. And almost always the food you’ve seen on screen stays with you,” she says, such as the pan of bacon and fried eggs from Howl’s Moving Castle (2004) which she included in her menu.
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Serving up food from a much-loved movie involves more than merely recreating a visual. There has to be an effort to replicate the complete sensorial experience. For this, Chef Anumitra says, she draws from the time spent living and working in Japan. “While I visually map the food to reproduce it, I also strive hard to capture the flavour and the feelings it evokes. One of the bento boxes featured in From Up on Poppy Hill (2011) has a particular fish that’s not available here, but I know its taste and feel. So, I used kane — ladyfish — which is the closest in appearance and flavour,” the chef says.
The Japanese series Midnight Diner (2009) served as inspiration for another special menu by Chef Anumitra. She was fascinated by it, right from the title song which includes the making of a simple, but delicious soup. “This series is all about food and a specific culture. I’ve lived alone in Japan and understand the comfort a diner that’s open from midnight to dawn can provide through its simple, satisfying food,” she says.
What she particularly enjoyed about working with food from both Studio Ghibli productions and Midnight Diner was their simplicity and lack of pretentiousness. Sharing that simple joy with their diners is something these chefs work towards, whether through the Berzatto family spaghetti from The Bear or the onigiri from Spirited Away (2001).
