The El Bulli Movie

The former world's best restaurant is set to become a motion picture. Here's who we'd like to see it star, from head chef (Depp?) to the sexy French apprentice

The long-circulating rumors about a fictional El Bulli movie were confirmed this morning when Vendome Pictures, the production house behind El Bulli (creative name!) announced that it's finally been given the green light. It's going to be based on Lisa Abend's The Sorcerer's Apprentices: A Seasons in the Kitchen at Ferran Adria's elBulli, which focused on the drama of young chefs going through the restaurant's famous stagiaire training system (in which they aren't even allowed to taste the food they're preparing). This angle on the world-famous restaurant means there'll be a whole ensemble cast of up-and-coming actors dressed in chef's whites pretending to properly prepare sea anemone.

Back when the book was first released and optioned, Abend said she hoped Johnny Depp might get cast as Adria (because, of course, she wanted to meet the actor, who incidentally doesn't look anything like the head chef). We think we can do better.

Besides Adria himself, the main characters are his Chefs de Cuisine--Eduard Xatruch, Mateu Casanas, and Oriol Castro--and a selection of stagiares: Katie Button, an American former biomedical researcher turned chef; Luke Jang, a Korean who paid his way to El Bulli by working in a slaughterhouse; Andrea Correa, a Colombian chef who gets to be Oriol's personal assistant; Roger Alcaraz, a son of Catalan goat farmers; and Gael Vuilloud, a young French chef who can't quite pick up Spanish.

Who knows which will make the cut for the actual Hollywood treatment? But here's who (we think) should play them if they do:

Ferran Adria:

Dan Hedaya. The key to Adria is the eyebrows, and Hedaya is the eyebrowiest character actor in Hollywood. If he can pull off playing Richard Nixon, we think he can probably do a Spanish accent and poke some buttons on high-tech food thingamajigs.

Eduard Xatruch, Oriol Castro, and
Mateu Casanas: Here's what these three Chefs de Cuisine look like:

And here's who should play them:

Edward Norton, Mark Ruffalo, and
Adrian Brody not only look like the three chefs, they're also all at a power level where it wouldn't burst our pop-culture minds to see them acting as close friends and coworkers. Also, all are versatile enough to play either good chef or bad chef to their assistants, as the situation demands.

Katie Button:

Anne Hathaway. For the relatively unknown stagiares, we could go as far away from reality as we want, but since we know what Katie Button looks like (she's a chef at Curate, in Asheville, NC), we might as well pick a lookalike. Assuming she's able to dial down the Les Mis level of drama, we already know Hathaway does "ambitious assistant" well, and it's easy to imagine her as a former high-strung biomedical researcher.

Luke Jang:

Sung Kang. The young Korean actor has most recently shown up in a lot of Fast and Furious movies, but he's had some starring roles in smaller indie flicks, too. The real-life Luke only got the job at El Bulli after camping outside the restaurant until Adria relented and allowed him to come on as a stagiare, but the scene when he starts questioning his goals should be good grist for the acting mill.

Andrea Correa:

Lizzy Kaplan. We just want to see her and Mark Ruffalo become friends, possibly because we would like to be friends with both of them. Andrea picks up an almost psychic ability to know what Oriol wants during her time as a stagiaire, and it's not hard to imagine a kind of professional chemistry--shared glances, comfortable jokes, and maybe some life advice--developing between these two.

Roger Alcaraz:

Jan Cornet. This young Spanish actor was most recently forced to undergo a sex-change operation by Antonio Banderas in The Skin I'm In, but he would bring a fresh face (and a real accent) to the all-American cast. He's got the right swagger for the inevitable scene of making fun of the American imports/bragging about Spanish food, too.

Gael Vuillod:

Louis Garrel. The movie is mostly set in a kitchen, after all, so we had to bring a major heat source into the equation. Garrel could convincingly bumble through in a French accent, and even more convincingly tempt a straight-laced Hathaway into a few nights of, uh, dissolution.

As El Bulli Winds Down, Our Writer Scores a Final Meal
Fast-Food Movie Menu Tie-Ins We'd Like To See
Beyond the Royale With Cheese

Sign up for the Bon Appétit


Explore Bon Appétit