Behind the Dish review: relishing that mouth-watering money shot

Food-focused documentaries crave that mouth-watering money shot: the images that make you think “man, I shouldn’t have watched this on an empty stomach.” There’s plenty of them in Behind the Dish, a trilogy of 13-ish minute 360 videos about female chefs and restaurateurs from America, France and Japan, who make food with a vision; food that tells a story. We assume it tastes great, because it looks pretty damn good.

The subjects are Deborah VanTrece, a Black lesbian who specializes in soul food—i.e. fried chicken and mac and cheese—served in modest surrounds; French woman Hélène Darroze, who has fine food in her DNA, being a fourth-generation cook with six Michelin stars; and Yumi Chiba, a sushi chef who inherited the family restaurant, and, following many years of hard work, finally came to view herself as the real deal, making it in an industry dominated by men.

This aspect of Chiba’s journey taps into a theme explored in each episode: achieving success in spite of the patriarchy. But this point isn’t laboured and the tone is celebratory. Director Chloé Rochereuil covers off on expected discussion points such as the chef’s personal stories, their philosophical approach to cooking, and the sourcing and preparation of ingredients.

In the series’ centerpiece scenes, everything other than the dishes ceases to exist. Rochereuil doesn’t just zoom in on the cuisine: she isolates it in front of a black tableau, as if removing the food from the space/time continuum, and spectacularly manipulates scale and perspective, making the dishes feel massive—or, conversely, making us feel small, like we’re The Incredible Shrinking Man or one of The Burrowers. The ingredients sparkle; curls of smoke come off them. They look as ravishingly cinematic as long shots of mist-ensconced mountains.

When discussing how they aspired to “change the perspective on gastronomy” in an interview with XRMust, Rochereuil and producer Victor Agulhon explained that they used “unprecedented macro 3D 8K VR images of food” to impart the “impression of being reduced to the size of an ingredient placed on a plate.” This kind of photographic whizbangery, motivated by a desire to take us closer to something than we’ve ever been before, is usually the domain of nature documentaries. It’s striking to witness this effect in VR; I’ve never seen food images quite like it.

In most other areas, the series is stripped-down and unembellished. The camera tends to be placed in a central position, primary areas of interest directly in front of us, so we’re not expected to turn our heads to follow the action. These immersions are a little staid, and there’s nothing innovative about them. But those food ones are great.