La Cocina: A Radical Shift in Perspective on Restaurant Life!

Poster for La Cocina by director Alonso Ruizpalacios

La Cocina In U.S & Mexico Theaters

Including Austin’s Violet Crown

There’s a scene is Alonso Ruizpalacios new film La Cocina, in which Pedro (played by the magnetic Raul Briones) stands across from his love interest, Julia (played by Rooney Mara), a lobster tank between them. Pedro is a cook at The Grill, one of those giant restaurants in Times Square that cater to tourist, and Julia is a server and pregnant with Pedro’s child. In a beautiful monologue, Pedro tells Julia how Lobster used to be “a poor man’s meat,” fed to prisoners and servants, until it was repackaged into one of the most expensive items on any restaurant menu across the country. The lobster itself didn’t change, but how it was seen shifted from being a poor man’s food to rich man’s delicacy. 

A shift in perspective made the lobster valuable. La Cocina is a shift in perspective. It provides a behind-the-scenes look at one of the most abusive and exploitative industries in the U.S., which also happens to be the second-largest domestic employer.

For many cities, including New York City—where the movie is set and where I worked as a hostess, server, bartender, back server, line cook, salad prep, and manager over the course of 12 years—it is the backbone of the economy. The service sector was one of the first to return to work after the COVID lockdown as essential workers, yet they are still not paid a living wage. These are not things most people think about when they order lobster, but they are things Ruizpalacios considers.

I was fortunate to attend the NYC premiere on Thursday, Oct. 24th, at the Angelika Film Center through my connections in the restaurant industry. As I sat beside my husband, who never worked in restaurants, I kept whispering to him, "That happens," "That happens," "That's how it is." While a reviewer for The Hollywood Reporter may call the film "explosive" and another for Deadline may describe it as "The Bear on steroids," every scene brought me back to how anxiety-inducing and stressful a single service could be.

Every restaurant worker I spoke to agreed that this film was incredibly authentic to our experiences—including the racial and immigrant status divides between the front and back of the house, the oftentimes adversarial and accusatory management, the exploitation of undocumented workers, the varied relationships between co-workers, the chaos of the back of the house contrasted with the performance on the dining room floor, the yelling, and more.

Significantly, the film and its production company, Willa, have partnered with the One Fair Wage campaign to demand an end to the sub-minimum wage for tipped workers and advocate for a living wage for all in the restaurant industry.

Ruizpalacios ushers us into this world through the eyes of Estela, a newly arrived immigrant from Mexico who starts working in the kitchen. Though she has worked at Sanborns, a restaurant in Mexico, she often finds herself overwhelmed on her first day at The Grill. Estela (portrayed by Anna Diaz) steals the film, in my opinion, as the female protagonist I most cared about and identified with, conveying so much through just a look or gesture.

The director and writer were incredibly thoughtful about every aspect of the film and its representation of restaurant workers. An opening scene, in which Ruizpalacios continuously rolls the camera for more than 10 minutes, takes us into the dingy backrooms and cluttered basements that serve as restaurant offices. In this uncomfortable space, Estela interviews with Luis, a Mexican American manager.

The tenseness of the opening scene immediately exposes why the restaurant industry is ripe for abuse, especially sexual harassment. She is desperate for a job, and he knows it. After she is told where to get a fake Social Security card later in the day, the camera follows her into the women’s locker rooms and then into the workday. Kitchen staff prepare for lunch service and will also work through dinner, of course—a typical 10-12 hour shift on your feet for a cook.

But beyond these details, the long continuous shot involving many actors reminded me of the restaurant industry—everyone is dependent on each other, and every position is so intertwined.

In the talkback after the movie, the cast discussed this opening scene and how they had to rehearse it. Diaz mentioned that if anyone messed up, they had to start over.

This is a perfect parallel to what happens in a restaurant. Before you get that plate of lobster, so many collaborations and moving pieces have taken place that the typical patron has no idea about. If anyone messes up, you may have to start over. The number of people involved in your meal—mostly immigrants, women, and people of color—is glossed over by the smoothness of service, yet this is also what patrons are expected to tip on. My goal as a server was often to be invisible—if my guests never had to ask me for anything, I had succeeded.

What I really loved about the film, though, was not the aspects of the industry that still give me nightmares years later. The film demonstrates that amidst the chaos and intensity of the restaurant, there are moments of quiet and moments of joy. In an early scene, the kitchen staff playfully insult each other in the myriad of languages spoken in every NYC restaurant kitchen. In another, Pedro asks three of the other cooks—a Moroccan woman, a queer immigrant, a Black man from the Bronx, and a Mexican immigrant—about their dreams. He demands that they share a dream, any dream.

As I wrote in my book A Mexican State of Mind: New York City and the New Borderlands of Culture, while young, white, attractive servers are often imagined as working in a restaurant as a temporary stopover on the way to “bigger” goals like acting, modeling, or dancing, the mainly immigrant BIPOC workers, who toil in the most taxing and low-paying positions in the industry, are never asked about their dreams or aspirations. It’s assumed that this—America, which for them is The Grill—is their dream. They are seen as “lucky” to have a “good” job.

I haven’t been able to stop thinking about this film since I watched it a week ago, which is why I find myself writing this review in the middle of the night on a flight when I should be trying to sleep. The writing, directing, acting—everything—is superb. There are so many nuances and layers to the storytelling, cinematography, and performances. Luis, the Mexican American manager, in one scene sits with the Mexican cooks during the family meal, joking around in a friendly way, while in another, he participates in problematic forms of punishment and compliance through the workers' undocumented status.

White privilege, gender, and illegality are all interrogated but in the context of workers' everyday lives, never in a heavy-handed way. The film is unapologetically mostly in Spanish, the lingua franca of NYC’s kitchens.

If La Cocina were a restaurant and I a restaurant critic, this film would get three Michelin stars (out of three!). It’s the best film about the restaurant industry I have ever seen.