Chef isn’t perfect; it lags in places, offers quick-fix solutions to characters’ problems, and feels wholly familiar. But at a little over two hours, it doesn’t ask much of you, and offers some pleasure in Saif Ali Khan’s return to form as an actor hard to look away from.

There are some interesting flavours here, but Saif Ali Khan’s ‘Chef’ feels derivative, and doesn’t come together as a fully satisfactory dish. And that’s got to do with the uneven writing.

Chef holds no secret sauce of its own, but perhaps we shouldn’t be that surprised. There is only that much you can do with a reheated film.

Chef offers moments of brilliance which, if weaved in a more organised manner, may have given us a light, affable film. But a lazy and rather uninterested narrative takes away the pleasure.

Grown up angst is a valid and neglected aspect of our storytelling. Except Menon’s digressing exploration of it feels more dull than delicious.

Menon throws in a decent mix of father-son friendship and footage of food to keep Chef from falling flat. Some delightful moments emerge courtesy the generation gap between Roshan and Armaan. Credit goes to chef Sandhya C Kumar for picking out an array of dishes that will either make you step out for a meal or put on the apron on to attempt making the rotza. Ultimately  Chef is that rare Hindi film that celebrates India’s diversity of cuisine and its unfailing ability to whet our appetite and for that alone it’s worth a watch.

It is pleasant in parts, pretty almost throughout, and the cast is charming. In the absence of heft and a commitment to its genre though, it remains an ineffectual film. Saif  Ali Khan, who I believe is one of Hindi cinema’s most underrated actors, needs to choose better.

A remake of Jon Favreau’s film by the same name, this film is more of a kitchen disaster than a chef’s signature dish. Unappetising!

After watching the original Chef, I made it a point to learn the name of the man who was responsible for those stunning dishes. Tasting chef Roy Choi’s food has been a specific goal on my bucket list ever since. Even though this film dropped the names of the chefs who masterminded the dishes in it, I couldn’t care less about remembering their names as I walked out of the cinema.