SYNOPSIS: Adam Jones is a Chef who destroyed his career with drugs and diva behavior. He cleans up and returns to London, determined to redeem himself by spearheading a top restaurant that can gain three Michelin stars

REVIEW:  Adam Jones (Bradley Cooper) is a man with a past. I mean a real bad past. His idea of purgatory is to shuck 1,000,000 oysters and then return to Europe to start…. not exactly all over, but to make up for lost time.

Mr. Jones has Burnt (pun intended) many bridges and is not only set on making amends, but to make it to his greatest goal, a 3 Michelin star restaurant. Right of the bat you will be mesmerized by the fast paced artistic food shots. Now, I don’t mean photos of food, its more like a film montage of the food that is put together in such a beautiful way that it truly is art.

This man is a flawed man. He was a wunderkind chef that let the success go to his head and add to that drugs, alcohol and girls, well let’s just say he Burnt out. OK, OK, I’ll stop, I promise. He shucked his last oyster in New Orleans, climbed on a plane headed to London and mapped out his plan. He sets out to reconnect with his old cohorts from his Paris days, some good, some bad but all prepared to help him in his quest towards the 3 Michelin stars. In his putting together his perfect team, he brings on an old colleague, Michel (Omar Sy) that he double crossed but has forgiven him, another friend whom he literally picks up from prison, Max (Riccardo Scamarcio) and a new blood, Helene (Sienna Miller), who has to prove herself because in the world of Haute Cuisine being a woman is a sacralige. He chooses the restaurant of another Paris cohort, Tony (Daniel Brühl) in which to make his comeback. At first sight, you would think that Tony hates Adam, but it’s a complicated relationship with lots of love and admiration between them. And so Adam Jones at the Langham is born.

Watching this film, I was very aware of the similarities of not only Adam’s character but of certain restaurants and styles. What do I mean by that? Let’s put it this way, if you take Anthony Bourdain and mated him with Gordon Ramsey, their love child would be Adam Jones. From Anthony, he gets the love of not only good high end food, but his comfort and love of street foods and the ease with which he approaches both of these cuisines. From Ramsey, well, let’s just say many a plate gets broken in the kitchen of the Langham and plenty of expletives are also thrown around. The arrogance of these chefs is such that you would think they are saving lives with every plate. One of Adam’s old friends and now rivals has made it big with a restaurant and style that when I saw it, I immediately told Cine Marcos that it was definitely modeled after elBulli in Madrid. Before elBulli closed in 2011, it’s dining room was a combo between art gallery and minimalist restaurant. The kitchen was an amalgamation of kitchen, laboratory, photo studio and so much more. If I am not mistaken, molecular gastronomy was born in that kitchen/lab.

This is going to be unusual, but I have to give a shout out to someone you would not normally expect to hear about in a movie review, but in this case, you have to give a big hand to Nicole Herft, food stylist for the film. The beauty of the plates, the shots of the quick fire food prep is all her doing. Of course, no doubt that the scenery is incredible, I mean its London after all!

The life of a high end chef is not for the weak of heart. It is stressful, the hours are long the reward is not always easily apparent, but when the chef and his kitchen work together, everything comes together like a well oiled machine. I personally enjoyed this film because I would like to consider myself a foodie/frustrated chef. There might be those that might feel that this film would have been better done in the 1990s and that it’s half baked, underdone and lacks seasoning (all puns intended), but give it a chance, if for nothing else, it will open your appetite.