By Jacqueline Wasilczyk
Former 'Top Chef' contestant Lee Anne Wong chats with Zagat Buzz about cooking with 'No Reservations'
No Reservations
courtesy of Warner Bros.
Top chefs are making their move to the big screen, and while they've yet to land leading roles, they're teaching the stars the skills they need to pass for natural born chefs. Ratatouille was rich in culinary detail thanks to Thomas Keller (The French Laundry, Per Se), who shared his expertise with the movie's animators and helped make it a hit with foodies. Likewise the credits for No Reservations – the romantic comedy that opens Friday and stars Catherine Zeta-Jones as Kate, a perfectionist chef suddenly facing challenges at home and in the kitchen – will include Michael White, former executive chef at Fiamma Osteria, and Top Chef fan favorite Lee Anne Wong. We spoke to Wong, who currently acts as Top Chef’s supervising culinary producer, about her role as culinary consultant on No Reservations and asked her what she thinks of our culture’s apparent obsession with all things chef- and cooking-related.
Zagat Buzz: Tell us about your role as a culinary consultant on No Reservations.
Lee Anne Wong
photo: Giovanni Rufino, Bravo
Lee Anne Wong: I worked with the production team and the director, Scott Hicks, to make sure the original screenplay made sense for American audiences. So things like [Kate’s] signature dish of “Quail with Truffles,” originally called “Pigeon with Truffles," had to be changed. I also worked with Jenny Wade, who plays Leah, the pregnant sous-chef. I taught her knife skills by asking her what she wanted to learn how to make, and then trained her [in] classic French technique. About halfway through our sessions I made her put on the fake belly because she had to learn how to be eight inches away from the stove while pregnant. I also had a couple of training sessions with Abigail Breslin. I taught her how to make pancakes and peel vegetables.
ZB: What are the special demands of creating meals for a film?
LAW: I worked with Scott Hicks and came up with a menu that would make sense for the restaurant that Kate owns, and then I worked with Diana Burton, who is the prop master, to actually style these dishes. We had a food stylist, so we took the menu items and had several sessions where we plated them differently. I would come in and plate a dish three or four different ways, and then Scott Hicks would come over with a production team and they picked out what they liked. It’s one thing to get a beautiful plate set down in front of you, but learning how it looks for the camera is something completely different, so it was a really interesting experience.
ZB: Do you feel that No Reservations does justice to the real workings of restaurant kitchens?
LAW: The production company of No Reservations worked with B.R. Guest Management and mirrored the kitchen closely to Fiamma. Michael White [former executive chef at Fiamma] did some hands-on training with both Catherine [Zeta-Jones] and Aaron [Eckhart], and one of the line cooks in the movie is actually one of the sous-chefs over at Dos Caminos. Two other line cooks, Arden Lewis and A.J. McCloud, are actually graduates of the French Culinary program. So these are actual line cooks who know the behavior of a kitchen, and that brings a sense of realism to the entire movie.
ZB: When you decided to pursue a culinary career, would you have imagined a day when we’d see shows like Top Chef on TV and chef-centered movies like Ratatouille and No Reservations on the screen?
LAW: My belief right now is that food is “in.” All things culinary are in a renaissance, and there are so many factors that have everything to do with it. People want to know where their food comes from, what goes on behind the scenes. Food is something that people delight in. They eat three meals a day and they want to know “the how and the why” behind what comes out to them on the table.
ZB: Both No Reservations and Ratatouille feature tough female chefs who’ve struggled to get where they are and fight to guard their territory. Do women still have to fight harder than men to move up in the kitchen?
LAW: I would say yes. I work in a culinary school, and even though half of our applicants are female, it’s still a male-dominated field. There are long hours, you’re working in front of a hot stove and there’s a lot of pressure to get things out on time. When I was a line cook there was always a lot of cursing, a lot of joking and male camaraderie, so you have to be tough.
ZB: Top Chef has not yet had a female winner. Do you think it could happen this year?
LAW: I think so. There’s a tremendous pool of talent for Season Three and we’ve had some really strong female characters. This season we looked for executive chefs, executive sous-chefs and people who ran their own businesses, so the cast this year has a lot of experience and creativity under their belt. There’s a distinct possibility for a female Top Chef.
ZB: Since you pick the ingredients that the contestants choose from, watching the show have you been disappointed by some of their choices?
LAW: In the episode [a few] weeks ago they were all going for scallops, and now scallops [are] the new crack of Top Chef 3. It makes my job difficult because I want to make sure that I give contestants a wide variety of proteins so that they’ll have choices. I’m thinking like a chef, so when I fill the fridge full of scallops, sea bass, this that and the other, and they all go for the same two ingredients, I could kick myself.
ZB: Do you plan to continue your involvement with the show next season? What’s next for you?
LAW: We’ll see if they ask me back! It’s a great job, and the fact that they are in Chicago next season makes me want to be involved. In addition to that I’ve also been talking to a couple of different networks regarding hosting my own cooking show. So hopefully I’ll continue to do production work with Bravo and still hold down my full-time job at the French Culinary Institute in New York City.