The story of the life of a professional restaurant chef turned chef on a food truck. between ability, opportunity, and fame.
This film tells the story of a chef named Carl Casper, starring and directed by Jon Favreau. Carl Casper is a Professional Chef who works as a head chef / cook at a restaurant in the city of Los Angeles.
In the initial story, Carl Casper and his team are depicted preparing food ingredients that will be judged by Ramsey Michael, played (Oliver Platt), a Food Blogger as well as a food critic. Because there are still some ingredients that are lacking, Carl Casper decided to go to the market and pick up his son first, which we know that Carl Casper and his wife, Inez (Sofia Vergara) have separated. In this scene we can see the conflict that occurred, this we can see that there is a less harmonious relationship between Carl Casper and his son, Percy (Amjay Anthony), where the relationship feels cold and is only a formality because of the status of father and son. It was told that Carl Casper and Percy were scheduled to watch a show, but it was canceled because Carl Casper preferred to go to the market to buy some of the food he needed, and asked Percy to wait at the restaurant while Carl Casper was shopping, but Percy refused and asked for it. so he can join in the shopping. The Padasceneer Carl Casper explains that the food he will cook will be judged by food critics and he hates people like that because it makes it difficult for him to work as a Chef. From Carl Casper's explanation, we can already know that there will be a conflict between Carl Casper and the critic who will judge his food.
After Carl Casper went shopping, the head chef made sure to his team that everything was going well including service, food and other things so that everything was what the head chef expected. But that changed when Riva (Dustin Hoffman), the owner of the restaurant, came. Riva asked if Carl Casper intends to change the menu for the day while many visitors will come to enjoy the food that the restaurant is a mainstay of. Carl explains that the existing menu will not help give a good assessment, therefore Carl is sure that the menu he will make will get a good assessment and will give an assessment of himself as a Chef because this is important for someone who works as a chef who works as a chef. considered an achievement. Hearing this, Riva as the restaurant owner did not care about this and Riva explained that Carl worked for him and in his restaurant, and in the end Carl Casper had to keep cooking the food that was the mainstay of the restaurant. It was continued when the results of the food assessment were released. It turns out that Carl Casper received 2 stars and received unpleasant comments on the dishes he and his team served and made this assessment the beginning of a conflict between Carl Casper and the food critic.
The story continued when Carl Casper asked about social media, namely Twitter to his son because a colleague he worked for alluded to his comments circulating on Twitter. After a brief explanation, Carl asked Percy to create an account to see about comments on him which continued to tweet his first tweets to challenge. the food critic to sample the new menu he was going to cook in a harsh word. Once this TweetCarl went viral and invited thousands of followers and became curious to know about the challenge.
When Carl and his kitchen team are preparing the dishes he will serve, Riva the restaurant owner returns and questions the new menu he wants to serve. Riva said that there were never that many visitors coming as long as the restaurant was standing. Carl explained that the number of guests who would attend was because Carl challenged the critic to eat the menu he was going to serve. However, Riva has a different view, Riva asks Carl to apologize for his tweet regardless of the harsh comments written by the critic against Carl and asks Carl to keep cooking the menu that is the mainstay of the restaurant. Carl explains to Riva that the working agreement between them is that Carl takes care of and is fully responsible for the kitchen and food and Riva, who according to the author is part of the restaurant's administration, with this agreement Carl still wants to make a new menu which he will serve to the critic. With the debate / conflict between Carl and Riva, Carl decided to leave and resign as a Chef at the restaurant.
Long story short, Carl got an offer to make a Food Truck after Carl decided to resign. Actually, the food truck has been discussed between Carl and Inez, which may be the idea that is one of the reasons why Carl and Inez separated. After being considered by Carl, the idea was accepted by Carl because he needed financial income but had to keep cooking. The scene continues when he is asked to accompany Percy to join Inez to Miami as well as to meet Martin (Rober Downey Jr.), Inez's ex-husband before there is a relationship between Carl and Inez to get a food truck.
The food truck that Martin gave to Carl turned out to be in a bad condition and this made Carl and Percy forced to clean up and buy kitchen equipment so that the food truck could function again and be suitable for a food truck. While Carl and Percy cleaned the food truck, it turned out that Carl's assistant while he was working at the restaurant, namely Martin (John Leguizamo) came to Miami where previously Martin was told by Carl that he was going to run a Food Truck. Martin said that the goal of coming to Miami was to want to keep working with Carl wherever and whatever food Carl would make, even though at that time Carl made an offer that Martin would not be paid. With Martin, who speaks the Spanish language that is commonly used in Miami and also has a relationship there, and the result is that this inappropriate food truck becomes an attractive and ready-to-use food truck called El Jefe with a food menu that is made from traditional Miami food. -Florida is Cubanos (Cuban sandwich).
Carl's quest to run a food truck business begins, the food truck's goal is to return to Los Angeles and during the trip Carl will stop at several places to peddle the food truck menu he made. Initially Carl just wanted to go with Martin, but Percy asked for help to join, which happened to be at that time the educational activities were off. During the trip to sell his food truck menu in a city / area, Carl stopped by at places that sell specialties of the city / area. Carl wanted Percy to be able to taste special foods as well as to rebuild good relationships and know more about Percy. Not only wanted to introduce a variety of foods, Carl also taught a lot and gave directions to his son how to work in the kitchen to cook and become a chef. Asap learns how to work in the kitchen, Percy also always publishes activities and Martin runs his food truck on various social media such as food photos, cooking videos, until he gets to the position where the food truck will stop to sell. From each of Percy's posts, it turns out that there are an effect on the number of consumers coming, and consumers who deliberately come to try / taste the food also post the food that is on the menu and the food truck. For Percy's action, Percy received praise from Martin as well as recognition from Carl who said that Percy was the Head of Marketing for his food truck.
At the end of the story the food truck has arrived at the last destination, which is Los Angeles, Carl said that everything will return to normal as before, where Carl must continue to run his food truck business, and Percy must return to school. But Carl is happy to get closer to Percy to make some memories they won't forget even in just a few weeks. Percy asked him to keep working on the food truck when school activities were over and at the end of the week, but refused and said that each of them should focus on their own activities. In the next scene Percy is escorted back to Inez's house, and at the moment of saying goodbye Percy asks Carl to see the 1 second video he made during their trip. After Carl saw the video sent by Percy, Carl's heart was touched by what they had lived. Finally Carl decided to call Percy and stop Percy from being able to work on the food truck after he came home from school activities and at the end of the week.
The final scene, the food truck is at an event where many other food trucks also enliven it. The El Jefe Team food truck looks complete coupled with Inez who helps serve consumers. Unexpectedly, the food critic who attended the event, and stated that the food Carl made was very delicious. And to resolve the dispute between them the critic recommends becoming an investor and to Carl a restaurant business where Carl is free to manage everything from concepts, food menus, and so on.
The really interesting side of this film is Carl's relationship with his co-workers and his son. This film shows how to work passionately, passionately, and professionally despite being under pressure and always being chased by deadlines. As the head chef at the restaurant where he works, Carl does not hesitate to always encourage his subordinates and he also without hesitation often says the words "please" and "thank you". Carl's relationship with his subordinates is not like a boss and subordinates, but is like a brother. Second, even though Carl is divorced from his wife, he keeps in touch with Percy, his only son. He still plays the role of a father who has the responsibility to educate and clean his flesh and blood properly.
There are lessons about entrepreneurship that can be taken from this film. Carl's career journey shows us that no matter how great and high our position is, if we are still working for other people, then we will still be governed by people who have higher positions and cannot move freely. Meanwhile, if we become entrepreneurs, we are the highest boss. We can manage our business at will and our creativity and passion are not limited.
This film also provides an example of the importance of self-control and to always be careful in the millennial era where social media greatly affects our lives. The beginning of the ruin of Carl's career was after he waged a cold war with the food critic via his twitter account. Then everything fell apart when Carl berated the critic directly at the restaurant where he worked and someone uploaded a video of the moment to the internet. We must be wise in using the internet and always be careful because content that has already been uploaded to the internet will be seen by the whole world and can be a very deadly weapon for the injured party. But on the other hand, the internet can also help marketing our products, as was done by Percy to support his father's business. His "digital marketing" technique succeeded in making his father's business sell well.
There are several things that attract attention in this film. First, there are two top Hollywood artists who only become supporting roles in this film, namely Robert Downey Jr. (actor Iron Man) who became the ex-girlfriend of Carl's ex-wife and Scarlett Johansson (who played Black Widow) who became Carl's co-worker at the restaurant. Apart from that, throughout the story, we are treated to typical Spanish music which is the soundtrack or those played by the musicians included in the story. The strains are enough to make us relax while continuing to follow the storyline.
As far as I'm concerned, the only downside of this film is the large amount of rant used by Carl and his co-workers. However, the shortcomings are completely covered by the warm and touching story and the professional values that are taught in it. I recommend the film "Chef" for you to watch with the people closest to you.