Got a nice little write-up on Chef du Cinema in my hometown weekly this week.... Unfortunately I won't be around to bask in the notoriety as I'm up in Montreal covering JazzFest for
National Geographic. I may be missing the love, but I sure ain't missing the heat, thank you.
Chew on This:
Meet Ron Deutsch, the Chef du Cinema
By Marc Savlov, Fri., June 29, 2012
Photo by John Anderson
Food and film – the two most delectable and (when directed and consumed properly) the two most sumptuous and soulfully enriching art forms a person can indulge in – have always been deeply intertwined. Long before the Alamo Drafthouse and chef John Bullington forever challenged and changed Austin's expectations of what "dinner and a movie" could truly mean, there were the iffy snack bars and wonderfully greasy drive-in kitchens of yore. Junk food for junk culture, as it was viewed at the time. I remember gorging myself on drive-in fare so unappetizing that it had to be served, inevitably, impaled on a wooden dowel – as though it were some sort of revenant in a Hammer horror picture, or a forlorn bit of The Blob, necessitating rapid consumption lest it consume the unwary audience member. As a little kid, I loved it anyway. These days, not so much.
Thankfully, local food and film artisan Ron Deutsch is aiming to both elevate the filmic art form and elucidate for the audience the joy of cooking with both class and gas in his role as Austin's "Chef du Cinema." Deutsch is a longtime fixture in Austin's film and food communities, and a well-travelled scholar of both. (West of Zanzibar? He's not only seen the film, he's been there.) Since 2010, he's been pairing classic movies with four courses of obscurely delicious comestibles prepared, explained, and cooked in a classroom setting that doubles as a theatre when the stove is extinguished and the lights go down. His mission? You can do this too, at home, and you don't have to be Julia Child (or Roger Corman) to pull it off.
For the rest of the article, click here....
