'The Taste of Things' with Dave and Chris

In the 2023 French film The Taste of Things, a character named Dodin feeds a 12-year-old girl a piece of bone marrow. She hates it. Instead of being offended, he tells her to remember the taste anyway. "You're too young to like this now," he says. "But remember it, because I'm telling you this is perfect." For chef and Recipe Club host Dave Chang, that single scene captures the entire argument for why this is the greatest food movie ever made. It is a film about using taste as a form of time travel, a benchmark for memory, and a language for things that cannot be said aloud.

The Only True Food Movie

Chang’s central claim is not just that The Taste of Things is the best food movie, but that it might be the only real food movie. He argues that classics like Big Night, Tampopo, and Chef are not actually about food. They use food as a prop to tell stories about family, gangsters, or Hollywood egos. "If you change the two brothers to a second-hand car store, it's still the same movie," Chang says of Big Night. In contrast, The Taste of Things has almost no plot beyond the preparation and consumption of food. The story exists only to create another reason to cook. Co-host Chris Ying pushes back, calling the film "food porn" because the narrative is so thin it feels like an excuse to watch beautiful people make beautiful dishes. Chang counters that this is precis