Today's Special

Today’s Special is a film about a sous chef named Samir working his way up in a fancy kitchen in NYC. He’s got his hopes set on becoming the head chef at an expansion restaurant from the one he’s currently working in. His boss has other plans.

Samir quits his job and tells coworkers he’s going to Paris to work at a fancy restaurant. He goes home to tell his parents about it and this causes his father to have a heart/panic attack from the stress. The doctor tells Samir’s dad to take it easy, so Samir offers to run his father’s restaurant. Samir tries to be the boss, but finds out it isn’t as easy as stepping into the role at a high-class restaurant.

Samir befriends a cab driver who has some experience cooking. In fact, the cabbie turns the restaurant around with his amazing Indian cooking, and the crowds are beating down the door. The father decides to sell the restaurant just as the restaurant gets a huge boost from a New York Times review.

The film is well-acted and fairly believable; however, there are TONS of opportunities for this to be a “food porn,” and it falls completely flat in that aspect. The cooking is very glossed over and not filmed well. Even a little quality lighting would have helped. You WANT there to be slow motion shots of the food, but that doesn’t appear to be the director’s MO, sadly. In fact, I heard a number of viewers mention the same thing after the film. It’s a good story with a good love story, but there’s a lot left out. The romantic portion of the movie could have been expounded on a bit (remember, this is a GUY saying this), and the pacing could have been a little better. It started strong, then got long-winded, then got good again. And the fact that the cabbie got like 10th billing was a little disappointing as well. He was the one with all the character pizzazz!

Decent film and pretty amusing, but I wished it had been better.