Ramen Teh (情牽拉麵茶) (aka 'Ramen Shop') (2018)

A Japanese kid, the son of a ramen shop owner, heads to Singapore to investigate his mother's estrangement from her Singaporean-Chinese mother (his grandmother) and in the process, embarks on a culinary tour that equips him with the skills to bridge not just culinary but also familial divides and historically entrenched cultural rifts.

★★★☆☆

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Jiro Dreams of Sushi (2011)

As I struggle with furniture companies that outsource (and so disown) unreliable delivery services, and as it feels increasingly like, in Australia, you have to fight to get anyone to do what they are in fact paid and are supposed to do, it is refreshing to watch this Japanese documentary about a man and his sons and their kitchen crews who wholeheartedly devote themselves to their jobs, turning into an art even the most menial aspects of sushi-making, like massaging the octopus (not a euphemism) - this family of sushi chefs are committed to their art, even at the cost of family- and leisure-time and even though it might all go (tuna-) belly-up after the patriarch scales down his involvement.

★★★★☆

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The Founder (2016)

Like The Social Network, this corporate biopic details the staggering rise and rise of a business - here, McDonalds - and uncannily it too centers on a corporate go-getter whose vision and drive far outstrip those of the founding brothers left watching their own creation run away from them; whatever your thoughts on the golden arches, Michael Keaton's Ray Kroc, with his mad enthusiasm for the speedy kitchen and his simple but ingenious corporate manoeuvres, is so compelling he will have you grinning from ear to ear. 

★★★★☆

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