If television shows like Iron Chef and Hell’s Kitchen have failed to convince you that cooking is a spectator sport, The Chicken, the Fish and the King Crab, directed by José Luis López-Linares, will confirm that cooking is indeed the new hockey. The cooking competition in this film, the Bocuse D’Or, is the most elite in the world. What these chefs can do with food is truly extraordinary—chicken skin as thin as paper, crabmeat smoked with chamomile stuffed into a halibut (albeit a farmed halibut, much to the horror of the foodie audience at the Vancouver International Film Festival last fall—there were actual gasps). The film follows Jesús Almagro, a Spanish chef, for about ninety minutes as he tries to win the trophy, and if you don’t think that watching someone bake can have you on the edge of your seat, you’re in for a big surprise.
