Mostly Martha

The film opens on Martha's therapist's couch, and she can only talk about food. Ordered into therapy by her restaurant's owner, Martha spends her sessions describing how she'd roast a pigeon — sides of ravioli with boletus and truffles, or tagliatelle with spring onions, glazed shallots, and a thyme sauce — rather than say anything about herself. It's one of the film's best jokes about her, and it's never a plated dish: the pigeon and its sides live entirely in her monologue, so there's no recipe for them here.

She's just as voluble about lobster. Another session becomes a lecture on buying one — don't take a lobster that's been in the tank too long, she warns, because "it begins to eat itself from the inside out" — and on killing it humanely with a quick knife to the neck rather than boiling it alive. Again, it's talk, not a scene of her cooking one.

A real chef trained the cast. Sandra Nettelbeck brought in a professional chef to choreograph the kitchen work so that Martina Gedeck's plating, knife work, and pass-window timing read as the real thing on screen.

The film was successful enough to get an American remake. No Reservations (2007), with Catherine Zeta-Jones, follows the same premise beat for beat.