Notes: Sony Pictures Classics. 100 minutes.
Pascal Ichac: Pierre Richard
Princess Cecilia Abachidze: Nino Kirtadze
Zigmund Gogladze: Timur Kamkhadze
Anton: Jean-yves Gautlier
Marcelle Ichac: Micheline Presle

Director: Nana Dzhordzadze
Producer: Marc Ruscart
Screenplay: Irakli Kvirikadze
Cinematography: Georgi Beridze
Music: Goran Bregovic
Language: French and Russian with English Subtitles

Summary: This story begins in pre-Communist revolution Russia and follows the incredible adventures of French chef Pascal Ichac. Early in the film he meets Princess Cecilia Abachidze and the two travel through Russia together. His keen sense of taste and smell allow him to detect bombs; twice he smells gunpowder and manages to foil the plots of the revolutionary Zigmund Gogladze. Unfortunately, in doing so he manages to create a life-long enemy. Later, he settles down with Abachidze and opens his own restaurant in Georgia. During the Communist revolution he refuses to leave his restaurant and ends up being a servant to Gogladze. Gogladze eventually persuades Abachidze to marry him in return for promising to spare Ichac life. Ichac's servitude to Gogladze does not last; he serves him crow, resulting in the communist getting ill in front of his troops. After that incident Ichac lives in an attic and is brought meals by Abachidze until he dies.

Commentary: Throughout this film one gets to watch Ichac both eat and prepare wonderful meals. One exceptional scene is when he is challenged to identify all the meats in a dish. Not only is he able to identify all of the meats, he is also able to tell that the liver used in the dish is bear liver. Another wonderful food scene occurs when he is showing a fellow gourmet the dishes in his kitchen. He gestures to the gourmet and tells him that the best dish is over here, and gestures to a pit. One of his assistants removes a sumptuous looking suckling pig. The food scenes in this film are fewer in number and less appetizing than those in Big Night, but they are certainly sufficient to qualify this as a food film.