If, like me, you enjoy food, you may have also enjoyed watching TV show The Bear, the third season of which was released this past week. Honestly, many of the characters piss me off (especially Richie), but the cinematography is on point and there are many mouth-watering cooking scenes.
The DVD cover for Amuse Bouche (a 2024 film from studio Dorcel and director Ricky Greenwood) is clearly heavily inspired by the poster art for The Bear, so much so that I thought it might be some kind of parody. However, aside from the poster and the culinary theme, they have very little in common.
Amuse Bouche stars Lumi Ray as a chef who trained at a prestigious culinary school in France, but has returned to the USA to take over her father's (Tommy Pistol) restaurant. However, she finds herself locking horns with her colleague Nathan Bronson who may cook delicious meals but has a very laid-back attitude which conflicts with her serious nature.
Lumi gives an impassioned performance and is well suited to the role since she actually used to be a chef. That said, her character's negativity pisses me off a bit. Nathan is also a great fit as he has his own cooking themed YouTube channel called "Cooking with Nathan" (to which there is actually a cheeky reference in the film). In fact, there have been a couple of episodes featuring Lumi, including one where they have a cook-off.
Tommy's portrayal of Lumi's caring father was pretty good, and I thought Derrick Pierce was superb as the powerful and condescending TV chef. I loved seeing Alexis Tae as Lumi's girlfriend, but her role is unfortunately quite small. Though not as small as that of Maya Woulfe who appears as a member of waiting staff for barely a minute, without even a line. There are plenty more cameo appearances, including Kylie Ireland as a cooking influencer and Casey Calvert as the director of Derrick's TV show.
The film's writing, unfortunately, leaves much to be desired. It almost sounds like it was written by ChatGPT with lines that made me go "huh?". There is one, for instance, in which Lumi proudly announces (to congratulations from Tommy) that they are "out of the black". Didn't she mean they are out of the red?! As with many films, you can barely make out the dialogue at times due to the poor audio quality, but that isn't necessarily a bad thing in this case.
Regular readers will know that I like to work out the filming locations of the flicks I review. But was I able to do so this time? Well, I searched for ages and turned up nothing and was ready to give up when… guess what, I figured it out. The address of the restaurant featured in this film is Unit D, 171 Live Oak Avenue, Arcadia, California. For many years (since at least 2005), this was home to the Sake Grill Lounge. At one point they were also a MrBeast Burger outlet (you can actually see some MrBeast Burger stickers in one of the kitchen scenes).
However, in April 2024, it was transformed into (of all things) the Arcane Maid Cafe! In fact, if you check out the maid cafe's Instagram page, you'll find clips of maids tearing down the furnishings as part of the renovation (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6).
It's my theory that Amuse Bouche was filmed at some point between the Sake Grill Lounge shutting up shop and the maid cafe taking over. It would perhaps explain how they could get away with filming sex scenes in both the kitchen and the dining area. Regardless, given there are few photographs online from inside the Sake Grill Lounge prior to the renovation, it's interesting to think that this porn film will keep the memory of that place alive.
Aside from the poor writing and audio quality, Amuse Bouche is a very enjoyable film with many cooking scenes for you to feast your eyes upon. Foodies should definitely check this out.
★★★★☆ 4/5