Ratatouille in the flesh

One of my favorite movies is Ratatouille by Disney’s Pixar.

image taken from Disney

It’s about a talented rat named Remy with aspirations to be a chef.  Although the protaganist was blessed with a keen sense of smell and taste, well, the fact that he is a rat makes it a teensy bit difficult for him to get his foot in the door.  Enter his human friend Linguine and the story is set. The movie is fantastic. Aside from the fabulous animation, colorful characters and witty humour, the movie makers were meticulous about portraying the restaurant industry — they capture the spirit of cooking and the soul of the kitchen.

In the movie, the rat comes up with an innovative version of the traditional French Provencal stewed vegetable dish, ratatouille.  Although typically the dish does look like a vegetable stew might, the way it was presented in the animated movie was so pretty and delicate.

Here’s a picture of what ratatouille typically looks like:

image taken from mediterrasian.com

And here is Remy’s take on ratatouille in the movie:

image taken from cornichon.org

So I clapped my hands with glee when I found a picture of Per Se’s version of ratatouille:

image taken from Fido Cat at flickr

Don’t you think they look almost identical? Perhaps the animated rat made an impression on the chef at Per Se!

UPDATE: it was the other way around! From Wikipedia: Thomas Keller served as a consultant for the 2007 Pixar animated film Ratatouille, allowing the producer to intern in the French Laundry kitchen and designing a fancy layered version of ratatouille, “confit byaldi“, for the characters to cook. In the American version he plays a cameo appearance as a restaurant patron (the part is played by Keller’s former mentor Guy Savoy in the French version, and Ferran Adrià in the Spanish one).

For those that do not know Keller is the current chef at Per Se restaurant in NYC>

Per Se, 10 Columbus Circle, New York, NY

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