Sushi, puddings, pies and Kung Pao Chicken: Such specialties are no longer limited to food and cooking shows, as more and more movies and TV dramas are paying attention to food.

With the arrival of Love Actually this month, a domestic TV drama centered on food, audiences will find yet another cuisine-oriented show on the menu.

Though some scholars criticize these dramas for having superficial themes, delicious food, handsome stars, and teary plots are hard to resist.

Chinese programs

Produced by Haoju Drama Company, Love Actually is about protagonist Qiao Zhixia, (played by South Korean actress Lee Da-hae), a young woman from an economically poor background.

After accidentally entering a restaurant, Qiao discovers she has a talent for cooking and helps owner Chen Haofeng (Taiwanese actor Joseph Cheng) turn the restaurant into a success. The two also become entangled in a romance.

This is not the first food-focused drama to enter China's market. Taiwanese director Ang Lee's movie, Eat Drink Man Woman (1994), is one of the early films that used food to tell a story, in this case, about retired chef Chu (Sihung Lung) and his daughters. The film was a smashing success and received numerous awards and nominations between 1994 and 1995.

In recent years, one of the most popular TV dramas was Master Lin in Seoul, directed by Yu Chun. It is about Chinese Sichuan cuisine chief Lin Fei (Lin Yongjian) who prevents a Chinese restaurant in Seoul from being shut down, after the Korean manager passes away.

Master Lin in Seoul was Yu's first time directing a film centered on cooking, after directing TV dramas like Conflicts in Lao Niu's Family (2010).

Yu told the Global Times that when he first received the script, there was no mention about which Chinese cuisine to focus on. They thus chose Sichuan cuisine, for its colorful appearance and variety of ingredients.

"It is a cuisine familiar to audiences," Yu added.

But this was more difficult than he anticipated. The drama featured about eight courses, which Yu set up a special group to film.

"The fish would not listen to you when you wanted to shoot. And we shot cooking scenes almost everyday," he said. "The same course was cooked and filmed repetitiously. Sometimes the smoke blurred the camera and choked the staff."

Yu gave an example of shooting in the kitchen at a cooking school they used in downtown Chengdu, capital city of Sichuan Province, where they had to film in the kitchen.

For a scene at a dining hall, they needed to go to a restaurant outside the city. Thus, they needed to cook each dish at least twice. Because the actors and actresses were not as skilled as the chef, substitutes needed to be found for certain cooking scenes.

Yu said he took the show as a trial for himself, but the TV drama received positive feedback. For future dramas, Yu said he would examine the deep culture behind the cuisines and integrate the story with the characters. 

Symbolic meals

Yang Xiaoxu, an epicurean and cuisine editor of dailyvitamin.cn, is a fan of food-oriented dramas and movies, watching such shows since her university days.

Yang said that different countries have various angles on food-focused dramas and movies.

For example, food-themed dramas and movies in Japan focus on the food itself, Tampopo (1985) and Udon (2006)highlight the intricate process of making Japanese noodles, detailing how to make a soup base.

A number of food dramas and movies in Europe raise deep philosophical themes using food.

French-Italian movie La Grande Bouffee, or The Big Feast, directed by Marco Ferreri in 1973, for example, tells about four men gathering in a villa for the purpose of eating themselves to death while having sex with women.

A Touch of Spice, a 2003 Greek movie directed by Tassos Boulmetis connects spices and herbs to planets in the universe. Other films include Delicatessen (1991), Dinner Rush (2000) and The Over-Eater (2003).

Yang said that these movies often raise questions on life, death and morality. Films in the 1970s and 1980s depicted sometimes gruesome things like cannibalism.

From the US, recent food-centered films include Chocolate (2000), Waitress (2007) and Julie & Julia (2009). These films are often about a protagonist discovering his or her passion in life. The animation Ratatouille (2007), tells the cute story of how a rat named Remy successfully fulfills its culinary dreams and becomes the chef of a restaurant.

Movies and TV dramas like My Name is Kim Sam Soon (2005) and Witch Yoo Hee (2007) are successful South Korean dramas. Like other current TV dramas in China and Japan, they use food as a lead, but the main focus is often on romantic stories. These dramas often feature famous stars with pretty faces.

But Ang Lee's The Wedding Banquet (1993) and Eat Drink Man Woman (1994) follow a unique style, said Yang. Taking meals as a symbol of families coming together, these movies of Lee explore family bonds behind the symbols of food.