If you’re looking for cooking and food movies similar to The Bear, there may be no better option than Boiling Point, at least in terms of its dramatic intensity. Filmed in an immersive single take, the movie follows a chef trying to maintain control of his kitchen and restaurant on an important night, under the watchful eyes of culinary critics and personal pressures. A direct representation of the routine frenzy in the world of haute cuisine.
Between thriller and acerbic satire on how elitism and snobbery can corrupt the love for art and cooking, The Menu is a movie that takes its portrayal of culinary culture to its most radical extreme, where its practitioners, as if in a cult, are willing to kill and die in the name of their art. An extremist vision, but rooted in the same methods and almost military attitudes of a kitchen, which we see in some moments of The Bear.
One of the dichotomies in the narrative of The Bear is the separation between the world of popular food businesses and fine dining restaurants: "Carmy" Berzatto (Jeremy Allen White) is a prestigious chef who, after his brother's suicide, must return home to take over his family's sandwich shop in Chicago and deal with the consequences. The Thai movie Hunger begins in the opposite direction: a young woman, running the family noodle business, is recruited for her talent to join a team of elite chefs under a renowned chef, preparing luxury dishes for diners who do not eat out of hunger, but because they can afford the most exquisite food in the world.
This same dichotomy is at the center of the movie Chef, directed by and starring Jon Favreau. This story follows a prestigious chef who, after a public controversy, is fired from his position at a renowned Los Angeles restaurant. With his career in ruins, he decides to travel to Miami, where he reconnects with his son, his ex-wife, and his passion for Cuban food, which inspires him to start a food truck