The day I watched Le Grand Chef (Korean movie)

*Spoiler*



I watched the Korean movie, Le Grand Chef with my friend, Karen today.

The story is based on a very popular Manga series with the same title which began in 2002 (more than 500,000 copies sold), Le Grand Chef tells an action packed story of two young chefs, (Seong-chan and Bong-ju) competing in a cooking contest. The reward is a cooking knife with a very prestigious and significant history attached to it. Brimming with thrilling set pieces, broad humor, mouth-watering food and a skillful interweaving of heartfelt back stories, the delectable Le Grand Chef was screened to a standing ovation at the recent 2007 Pusan Film Festival. It was #1 on the board for 3 weeks in Korea, beating "Hero", which was released on the same day (1 Nov 2007)..

The most touching scene has to be the one where Seong-chan (starred by Kim Kang-woo) had to sacrifice his beloved pet cow for the competition. The scene was captured beautifully and simple. It just totally engulfed the audience into the whole movie and this is the part where i shed some tears (yes, i am that emotional ^_^ ).

Another memorable part of the movie is where the group of them went in search of the best charcoal maker in the Korea and let us understand his whole life in a flash. It seemed to be a small part but it shows how Seong-chan fully utilised his talent to resolve the man's resentment in life before he departs the world. It shows the reason Seong-chan cook - for the joy of the food-taster.

This is why he managed to win the round where they need to show their slaughtering skills. His opponent, Bong-ju ( starred by Im Won-hee) is too obsessed with power and winning that he does not know the art of cooking. In the end, he lost the competition and everything he own.

I personally also love the part where he carried his grandfather on his back and walked through the fields.. How he is always so frustated that his grandfather is not eating the food when he had made them based on his requests.. How he finally realised that the requests are to help him to make the best soup, which let him won the competition.

This movie is excellent because there are all these small scenes that covered the whole background well. As it is based on the comic book, it had to squeeze in as much details as possible, which was done in the form of flashbacks. The flashbacks helped to make everything clearer, though the plot is already simple enough to guess.

If you have the time to spare, just go and watch the movie. Watch it with a simple mind where you just want to enjoy a movie and have a good time. ^_^

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By the way, I also want to share my experience at Kim Gary cafe at Vivocity. I went there for some light snacks after the movie. However, the whole experience was so disappointing.

First, the food is not as tasty as the JB outlet. We ordered a plate of the thick toast with butter and another is thick toast with peanut butter. Both tasted cold and made me instantly wished I am at Hong Kong Cafe instead. I also ordered the 4-pieces drumsticks, which i can only identify the pepper taste and nothing else. Well, i guess that is what i should expect for a grilled item..

I really hate that cleaning up (stacking of chairs, sweeping) is done when there are still so many guests around. Even though they did came over and asked whether we mind the sweeping. We did not mind but we wanted to leave A.S.A.P because of that. I can understand the staff's pain since many guests may be leaving at the last minute. Plus, the pay is usually low so nobody really want to work so late... Sighz.. Unless somebody (meaning from govt) do something, otherwise this will never change.. >_<

While eating and staring at the beautiful view outside, I saw a handsome man smoking. I told my friend about this and she said, "handsome but smoking, so it is not a good thing". So we proceed to a short discussion of why a handsome man who is smoking can be considered attractive to some ladies. The famous Chinese quote of "A dangerous and bad man is more attractive than a boring one" became my reasoning tool. Hahaha...