The flavors of love

Food (and Juliette Binoche) star in Trần Anh Hùng's new film, "The Taste of Things"

Trần Anh Hùng with Juliette Binoche who stars in his new heavenly food film, The Taste Of Things

If you’re still reveling in the glow of Valentine’s Day (or even if you’re not!), here’s my advice: Go to the movies and see “The Taste of Things.”

This is an amazing film. A love story between two people who love and live for food: Dodin Bouffant, who is modeled on one of my heroes, Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, and Eugenie, played by the incomparable Juliette Binoche.

How do you make a film this rich, this true about food? Well, for one, you hire one of the most famous chefs in France, Pierre Gagnaire, to consult on the menus and the cooking. (Pierre also got a great cameo in the film as chef to a pretentious prince.)

Pierre Gagnaire in The Taste of Things

But there were many more tricks to getting it right. This week on the Longer Tables podcast, Trần Anh Hùng, the film’s award-winning director, pulls back the curtain on how he made this masterpiece: his own food history, his 20-year search for the right food story to put on the big screen and the delight of eating nearly 100 pounds of pot au feu (French boiled beef) that the cooks prepared for the shoot.

As you may know from social media, I’ve been in Gaza with World Central Kitchen. So Hùng spoke to my executive producer Jane Black. It’s a great conversation and I hope you will listen and let us know what you think!