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On-screen stories about the challenges confronting restaurant owners are having a moment. Among the more recent films is A Moment in Time, a documentary detailing how two Washington chefs steered their Michelin-rated restaurants through three crises: the Covid-19 pandemic, the uprisings in the District of Columbia following George Floyd’s murder and the violent insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.
In the 17-minute film that was shot in 2021, Matt Baker, chef-owner of the Michelin-starred Gravitas, and Matteo Venini, chef and co-owner of Michelin Bib Gourmand winner Stellina Pizzeria, open up to James Bell, creator and director of James Bell Kitchen Table, an online series profiling American chefs. Baker and Venini bare their souls about the uncertainty and horror they experienced during those tumultuous times, not knowing whether their businesses would survive.
Talking to friends and family in Italy where the government had already imposed Covid-related restrictions helped Venini and his business partner, Antonio Matarazzo, plan ahead and prepare.
“Italy, it was basically easily a month ahead of us, because they got the Covid before, so we knew what would be the situation in the next three weeks,” said Venini, who hails from Mandello del Lario, Italy.
A Moment in Time, courtesy of Inertia Films
They converted Stellina into a take-out operation soon after D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser suspended sit-down service at restaurants and bars in March, 2020. Baker instituted carryout service at Gravitas, a new-American fine-dining restaurant, for two months. He ultimately closed it for six weeks so everyone could regroup. But he questioned whether it marked the end of his career.
“Is this what I’ve worked all of my life for, only to have it taken away from me?” Baker says in the movie.
Peaceful and violent protests engulfed the District and the nation for weeks, after video captured a white Minneapolis police officer kneeling on the neck of the black man George Floyd, killing him in May, 2020. Baker responded by giving his staff paid time off to protest. He also refused to board up Gravitas.
“I was like, you know what? I don’t agree with damaging property, but if throwing a brick through a glass window is going to make you feel better about where we’re at as a country, go for it,” Baker says in the movie. “I can always replace it.”
Left to right: Matt Baker, Matteo Venini, James Bell; A Moment in Time, courtesy of Inertia Films
Venini says the landlords in the building housing Stellina boarded up all of the businesses on the ground floor to protect them from potential property damage.
“We spent over two weeks walking into the restaurant right in the middle of the day and the restaurant was so dark and it was the most horrible feeling ever,” Venini said.
Boards covered numerous Washington businesses once more in the run up to and in the aftermath of the U.S. presidential election. The tense transition period attracted far-right protestors and counter-demonstrators to the city, and they clashed several times, sometimes violently. Both restaurants are just a few miles away from the U.S. Capitol, a powerful symbol of American democracy. On January 6, 2021, more than 2,000 Donald Trump supporters stormed the Capitol to stop lawmakers from certifying Joe Biden’s electoral victory. Seven people lost their lives in connection with the attack.
A Moment in Time, courtesy of Inertia Films
On that day, Baker said everyone stopped what they were doing at Gravitas to watch the news as armed insurrectionists breached and invaded the Capitol. Everyone was so distraught that Baker suspended dinner service and terminated carryout orders for the night.
“This is so disgusting what we’ve come to,” Baker said, adding that his daughter was a year old at the time. “And having my baby down the hall, thinking, what are we leaving to these kids? This is how we’re going to do this?”
Landlords boarded up Stellina once again, but the business didn’t close, because staffers were too busy filling carryout orders from Washingtonians who stayed home on January 6, Venini said.
The documentary, produced and directed by Bell, has won several prizes. It scored the Best Short Film Award for best documentary, a silver award at the Milan Gold Awards for short documentary and an award for best Covid-theme film from the Cannes World Film Festival. Bell says people connect with the film because Baker and Venini are emblematic of the challenges chefs are facing everywhere, and the sacrifices they make to feed customers and keep their workers employed.
“I’m grateful that people have been drawn to, and moved by, the film,” Bell said. “That it continues to gain momentum and awards around the world is a testament to the strength of the film itself and its story.”
A Moment in Time isn’t the only documentary charting how chefs and restaurant owners are dealing with the pandemic. Belle Vie, a 2022 documentary, details restaurateur Vincent Samarco’s unsuccessful fight to keep his charming French bistro, Belle Vie, open in West Los Angeles. It was one of the roughly 90,000 U.S. restaurants to close during the pandemic permanently or temporarily, according to the National Restaurant Association.
Marcus Mizelle, the film’s producer and director, lives within walking distance of Belle Vie, which was situated between two corporate giants — a McDonald’s and a KFC. Mizelle had been eating at Belle Vie at least once a week since it opened in 2016. He counts the chicken mole, branzino and warm goat cheese salad among his favourite dishes there. After Belle Vie became a carryout shop during the pandemic, Mizelle continued supporting it and checking in on Samarco.
‘Belle Vie’ is French for ‘beautiful life’ and for Mizelle, it’s also metaphor for how people can choose to look at obstacles. Samarco, he said, remained upbeat and optimistic, no matter what life threw at him.
“You have a choice, no matter what happens to you,” Mizelle said. “If something bad happens to you, you can choose to be negative or positive about it.”
He hopes people walk away from the documentary with a better appreciation for mom-and-pop restaurants and support them, even if they’re more expensive or a little out of the way.
“We need it,” Mizelle said. “If not, we’re all just going to be eating Chicken McNuggets.”
Other recent onscreen food stories include Bad Vegan on Netflix, British chef drama Boiling Point, and A Taste of Hunger, a fictional story about a Danish culinary power couple hellbent on securing a Michelin star for their restaurant.
Whether they’re short documentaries, Netflix series or fictional films, all of these pieces represent a continuation of what Robert Thompson, a pop culture professor at Syracuse University, calls a golden age of onscreen food stories that spanned the 1980s and 1990s. It started in 1985 with Tampopo, a Japanese comedy centred on ramen, and included Babette’s Feast, Like Water For Chocolate and Eat Drink Man Woman.
The reason we’re seeing so many come out in such a short period of time is because there are many more places for these stories to be told, thanks to streaming, which reaches audiences and shares content from around the world, Thompson said. Belle Vie, for example, will begin streaming on Apple TV on 5 April. Outlets like Hulu, Amazon Prime and Netflix produce or pay for original programming and provide an arena for people to see it.
The fate of restaurants is right up there in terms of the things we’re talking about because everybody experiences food, everybody has their favourite restaurants and everybody knows of at least one restaurant that has closed in the past couple of years, Thompson added.
“There’s a theatrical quality about it and it’s easy to tell stories about contemporary politics and contemporary issues like Covid in the context of something we can all understand,” Thompson said.
Food stories have always resonated with people because all of us eat to stay alive. It’s frequently done with other people, especially during courtship — the old “dinner and a movie” cliché. Restaurants aren’t just a place to eat, but their kitchens can also be a setting for high drama. Anyone who has watched Gordon Ramsay’s Hell’s Kitchen knows this to be true. Like the Eiffel Tower and the Hollywood sign, food also serves as a cultural marker. Think Philadelphia cheesesteaks or Chicago’s deep dish pizza.
“In telling stories with food at the centre, it carries all of the stuff that we’ve been talking about,” Thompson said. “Shared activity, a location for drama, cultural specificity as well as the idea that if this movie makes you hungry, it’s an invitation to do something about that.”
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