You know what America doesn’t have enough of? Food movies. Sure there’re a few movies like BIG NIGHT and RATATOUILLE but to get the hard stuff you have to go to Asia. All over Asia there are food comic books (Iron Wok Jan, Kitchen Princess) and television series dealing with cooking because, well, I’m not quite sure but if I had to guess I’d say that a lot of Asian countries take food way more seriously than we do in the States. So here are three of the best food movies you’ll see in your life, after the break.

.

.

.

.

THE CHINESE FEAST is the best of the best. Big-hearted and full of one-on-one martial arts kitchen battles it starts with an amazing culinary smackdown as tofu carving goes up against ice sculpting in a scene that ends in death and divorce. Then it becomes a very strange Hong Kong comedy for about 20 minutes, before settling down into an amazing restaurant wars epic as the evil Super Group restaurant conglomerate tries to take over a family-owned eatery. Check out this clip on YouTube (where you can also find the entire movie – good luck hunting down a DVD) in which Chinese martial artist Xiong Xin-xin shows how to make beef noodles. Directed by Tsui Hark it stars the late, great Leslie Cheung and Anita Yuen who, at the time, was the hottest thing going in Hong Kong films but she’s since faded back into television work and is a “Whatever happened to…?” these days. This is also a Chinese New Year movie, a genre of HK film that usually ends with the entire cast turning to the camera and wishing the audience a happy new year. In this case, the cast and crew toast each other and then the viewers in a giant, chaotic meta-scene that still gives me the warm fuzzies every time I see it.

.

.

.

LE GRAND CHEF is not quite as good as the other two movies mentioned here. It’s a Korean film adapted from a food comic book and, again, it’s a battle between a talented underdog chef and a hack celebuchef as they battle for the title of “National Chef of Korea.” Most impressive, however, is its matter-of-fact attitude towards where you get your beef. The underdog chef has a pet cow he’s raised from childhood and he comes to a point in the multi-day cooking competition when he has to find the best beef for a dish and…he turns to his childhood companion. The movie builds it up with him doing a “will I/won’t I” over slaughtering his bovine buddy and then he takes her to the slaughterhouse and the pet cow walks up the ramp, and you think he’s going to change his mind, and the music swells and…boltgun to the skull. Cue thousands of Korean children crying their eyes out. Yikes. (Watch the trailer, in which no cows are harmed)

.

.

.

ANTIQUE if you thought you couldn’t get through your life without one day seeing a musical about gay, Korean pastry chefs then this is the answer to your prayers. A guy who hates pastry opens a patisserie to pick up women. He hires a “gay of demonic charm” to be his chef. They learn to bake in a series of musical montages full of kick lines and sugar plum fairies and then there are some child murders they have to solve. It’s like a hunky Encyclopedia Brown story with chorus girls jumping around on top of enormous gateaux. It’s a bit strange, for sure, but it’s also downright drool-inducing and one of the only purely pastry movies out there. Based on a Japanese manga, it’s a Korean movie that stars four of the hottest young slabs of male beefcake in Korea and it’s refreshingly matter-of-fact about boys loving boys, both as friends and as lovers. If “Ace of Cakes” gets you hot and bothered, imagine a version with better-looking bakers and sexier food and you’ve got ANTIQUE. (Watch the trailer)

.