No I didn’t watch this movie today but I saw it on my shelf. It made me think of @mrgoldsdearie cooking verses which I love. I love the whole chef thing, the kitchen talk, the various dishes, the plating up and sending the orders out. I mean obviously I love the romance too but yeah I’m a sucker for the setting. Seriously if you haven’t read Gold’s Kitchen or Masterchef Storybrooke go do that.

Anyway this movie had Catherine Zeta Jones as a top chef at a posh restaurant. Her sister dies and she gets custody of her daughter. Around the same time her sous chef goes off to have a baby and a new sous chef – the eventful love interest – joins the kitchen. I can’t remember the names I haven’t watched in a while.

The chef is very particular, the sous chef is more heart not head and can be messy in the kitchen. The chef doesn’t really know what to do with this kid and so she gets her up at 5am to go to the fish market and takes her to the kitchen at night, and she winds up falling asleep in school. Cooks her posh food and then wonders why she won’t eat it etc.

The sous chef is better with the kid. Cooks her spaghetti at the restaurant one night, then goes over to chefs apartment and makes pizza etc. This makes the chef see them in a different light, they grow closer, fall in love etc. And then wind up opening their own restaurant which is more of a family diner, though they split the kitchen in two and have an actual line which the guy teases the chef about, by putting his spoon over the line etc.

I figured this could be done Rumbelle style so easily. It’s practically made for it. Chef Gold lives for his work as a top chef. He’s estranged from his son and devastated when he gets a call that says his son died but his grandson Henry lives. He brings the boy home but it’s been years since he had a kid in the house and he’s terrified because he and Neal fought a lot when he was a teenager and then Neal left home and Gold felt like it didn’t work out well.

Then at work new sous chef Belle French joins the kitchen. She is warm and bright and everything Gold isn’t. The owner of the restaurant Regina Mills has warned Gold before about his temper and manner and he thinks that Belle is his replacement.

Gold brings Henry to work and Belle talks to him and gets him to eat and Gold stiffly says thank you, maybe asks her how she did it. Henry really likes Belle and keeps asking to see her, until she comes over to the apartment. They make pizza and nearly kiss and anyway it goes on until the end when Gold quits and opens up the diner with Belle (better hours because it’s not open late at night) and they get married and then happy ever after.

Although it would be kinda heartbreaking to kill Neal. I suppose maybe not necessary. Instead Milah could have got full custody and she was killed which means Neal went back to his dad. There are options anyway.