The Hundred-Foot Journey Cooking

Food is the heart and soul of The Hundred-Foot Journey, and the thing that pulls Hassan back and forth across cultural lines. His family uses food to bring their Indian culture to the little French town of Lumière—hello, tension—and a key component of Hassan's process of coming into his own is figuring out how to strike a balance between the food he's grown up with and the food that's revered by the French culinary world. Add to this the fact that Hassan elevates cooking to true artistry—he's nothing if not a master—and we've got ourselves this theme.

Questions About Cooking

1. Do the types of memories Hassan has go along with certain types of foods? For example, are the happy memories remembered by delicious good food while the bad memories are marked by nasty food? Or is it maybe all the same?
2. Do you think that Hassan experiences the world through food and cooking at the expense of experiencing the world in other ways? Do you think that because he is so obsessed with becoming a chef he misses out on some of life's other important experiences?
3. Do his associations and memories change as Hassan moves around the world? Does his sense as an artist evolve with his changing surroundings?

Chew on This

Hassan's appetite for success isn't satisfied until he stops worrying about what other people think and starts cooking for himself.

Hassan's appetite for success isn't satisfied until he is widely celebrated by other people; it's all about external validation for this dude.