Before the Movie Opens, The Knives Come Out

The critics confer at DC Coast after the screening: David Guas, from left, Joe Raffa, Ann Amernick, Robert Wiedmaier, Carole Greenwood, Cathal Armstrong. (By Bill O'leary -- The Washington Post)

In the opening scene of the new romantic comedy "No Reservations," chef Kate Armstrong (Catherine Zeta-Jones) stands by the window in her Manhattan shrink's office and muses sensually about her signature dish, roast quail with truffles:

"There is no greater sin than to overcook a quail," she begins. "I prefer to serve them roasted. That makes their taste richer and more robust, and a side of truffle ravioli and wild mushrooms goes deliciously well with them."

After more waxing, cut to the kitchen where, dressed in pristine whites, Kate is plating that very dish for a customer. To the untrained eye, it looks delicious: a plump golden bird garnished with potato-chip-size shavings of black truffle.

To Restaurant Eve chef Cathal Armstrong, it looked ridiculous. "It was a squab, not a quail!"

"Any quail that big would have to be on steroids," scoffed chef Robert Wiedmaier of Marcel's.

Funny the things chefs notice when they go to the movies.

This summer, food takes the spotlight in two of Hollywood biggest releases, plus a popular indie flick. Pixar's "Ratatouille" tells the tale of an ambitious rat who dreams of being a chef, while "No Reservations," which opens Friday, shows how food can bring two very different people together. "Waitress," meanwhile, casts pie as a key player in the story of an abused wife searching for liberation. Critics have proclaimed this the summer of food love: the triumph of supertasters over the Applebee's crowd. But what do the chefs think?

To find out, we invited six Washington chefs to a screening. Along with Armstrong and Wiedmaier, our critics were Ann Amernick, pastry chef and co-owner of Palena; Carole Greenwood, chef-owner of Buck's Fishing and Camping and Comet Ping Pong; David Guas, executive pastry chef for the restaurant group that owns, among others, DC Coast and Acadiana; and chef Joe Raffa of Oyamel.

Overall, the chefs gave "No Reservations," a remake of the 2001 German film "Mostly Martha," six thumbs up. But, like any group seeing itself portrayed on the silver screen, the panel couldn't help picking the film apart -- from such small details as the way Kate filleted a black bass (wrong) to the way she tried to tame an overbearing restaurant owner (right, but fruitless). It was the equivalent of a half-dozen nuclear submarine operators cringing at "Crimson Tide."

First, the food. Like the animators behind "Ratatouille," who hired the French Laundry's Thomas Keller as a consultant, "No Reservations" director Scott Hicks ("Shine," "Snow Falling on Cedars") says he went to great lengths to get the details right. New York's French Culinary Institute helped design the menu for the fictional 22 Bleecker restaurant and created the food for the set. The line cooks in the film were real line cooks (and no, not "actors" who happened to be making a living as line cooks). And a chef from New York's Fiamma Osteria was on the set to ensure that nothing was utterly unrealistic.

"It's like having technical advisers you'd have if you were doing a sword-fighting scene," Hicks said in a telephone interview. "You have to have people to tell you when you get it right."

Or, for that matter, wrong. And on that score, the Washington chefs caught quite a few kitchen bloopers the advisers missed.