Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1485934
1 2 0 P E R S P E C T I V E | N O V E M B E R / D E C E M B E R 2 0 2 2 Food is theater. Food is comedy. Food is drama, satire. Food is life. As a struggling filmmaker, I worked in countless restaurants, working my way up from one, to two, to three-star restaurants. No job has prepared me more for filmmaking. From the long shifts, instant families, outsized pressure and glorified precision, it instilled in me a desire to be a part of something greater than myself. We—the staff—were nervous around our superiors, the occasional celebrity clientele. But the chefs—they were the ones we were terrified of. We revered them. Competed for them. At once desperate to go unnoticed, genuflecting as they walked past, secretly dreaming they'd pluck us out from obscurity. Years later, when I could afford to go to a destination restaurant, I somehow scored a last- minute table at Noma, René Redzepi's Copenhagen restaurant, crowned best in the world. Little did I know Noma was set to close the very following day for six months of renovations and to reopen S e e k i n g C u l i n a r y P e r f e c t i o n T H E M E N U B Y E T H A N T O B M A N , P R O D U C T I O N D E S I G N E R I've always been obsessed with food. A