By Chuck Graham, TusonStage.com
The restaurant business has always been as much about theater as it is about food. Even the simplest diner makes a minimalist statement about the environment in which its burgers and fries will be consumed – and shapes the attitudes of its customers.
“Spinning Plates” now playing at the Loft Cinema, 3233 E. Speedway Blvd., explores this culinary terrain filled with subjective judgments and imagination that stretches between the grill and the dinner plate.
Who among us hasn’t dreamed at one time or other of running a restaurant, whether it’s a swirling wonderland of gustatory delights or a simple place serving honest fare to hard-working people.
Making his documentary debut is filmmaker Joseph Levy, clearly tuned in to the spirit of dining as a full-on experience. At the top of his food chain is Chicago-based chef Grant Achatz, bright-eyed and elfin, who wants nothing less than having the best restaurant in the world. Literally.
Definitely more down to earth are the family proprietors of 161-year-old Breitbach’s Country Dining in rural Iowa. The kind of meat-and-potatoes place where farm families are happy to wait in line over an hour for the fried chicken and steaks.
The most humble is Tucson’s own La Cocina de Gabby with its endearing immigrant family of Francisco and Gabby Martinez who dared to try making their own dream a reality.
Levy has filmed each story chronologically, following each restaurant from its beginnings to current times. But their stories are intercut, so we follow first one than the others at parallel stages of this progression.
Each of the three faces heartbreaking difficulties before the film has ended. Gabby, as we Tucsonans know, had to close her restaurant before the film reached us. Their story touched Levy so deeply he set up a website for contributions to help Gabby get a new restaurant going:http://lacocinadegabby.weebly.com/
What makes “Spinning Plates” so special is the way each restaurant is detailed in terms of its passion to present a meaningful experience to its followers (they are far more than mere customers).
Achatz is as driven as he is arrogant. The Breitbach family (with their 161 years of history and the tombstones to show for it in the local cemetery) embrace their responsibility to their community.
Gabby and her husband are no less passionate than the others. They invest all their money, sell their home and simply refuse to give up.
No comments:
Post a Comment