FILM 1297: CHEF
TRIVIA: Jon Favreau did his own cooking by training with food truck chef Roy Choi. Choi sent Favreau to a week of intensive French
culinary schooling, where Favreau sharpened his knife skills and learned how to
make sauces. "I brought him into the kitchen, and he just kind of fit
in," Choi recalls. "I threw him a couple tests, like a case of
chives, or a case of onions, or peel two cases of avocados. Just to see where
his mind and his situation and his abilities were and how interested he was in
these things. He just attacked them. He really became a part of it."
The short scene with Carl and Percy
in the cinema features the audio from Iron Man's repulsor rays, as a nod to Jon
Favreau's previous work with the Iron Man films.
Promotional events centering on the
fictional Cubano-serving El Jefe proved so popular that Favreau and L.A.-based
chef Roy Choi who consulted on the film, have opened a series of pop-up
restaurants and announced that they are thinking about making the track
permanent.
Oliver Platt's brother is a
prominent food critic in the New York metropolitan area and has invited Oliver
on some of his restaurant visits.
Towards the end of the film, the El
Jefe truck is seen at a nighttime food-truck event, along with many of L.A.'s
most popular food trucks. This is an actual event in Venice called "First
Fridays." For a brief moment, you can see Chef Roy Choi's Kogi truck, the
food truck that started the whole gourmet-food-truck craze.
