Love, Charlie: The Rise and Fall of Chef Charlie Trotter (2021) review: Simmers nicely without coming to the boil

First, the good news. If you’re an aspiring chef then this portrait of a genuine gastronomic trailblazer will inspire you even further to chase your dreams. The bad? If you’re an aspiring chef then this could put you off altogether. This might sound like a back-handed compliment to the late Charlie Trotter, but in truth it’s an indicator of how much of a one-off a person can be.

This docu-biopic takes an intimate look at someone who was at the very top of his game and how he got there. It’s once we’re there where things get a little sketchy. If this movie were an onion, we’d only be peeling off the outer layers.

With most decent biographies, the subject’s formative years are there to provide a backdrop. That’s to say they’re extremely important to get a grasp of the person but far from the most interesting part of the story. That comes with the midpoint and ending, which here are sadly lacking. We get that Trotter was a highly flawed human being, but because this film is overly-concerned with shining a positive light, we don’t get to know the nitty-gritty.

Almost a decade ago, on this very site, appeared a feature about whether cooking on TV was at saturation point; as if it had almost outstayed its welcome. Today the force is stronger, if anything, what with shows like MasterChef and Saturday Kitchen bigger than they’ve ever been. At times it feels like we’re welcoming a new chef into our living room every other day, and while there were plenty of celebrity cooks before Trotter, it would seem he was the original culinary rockstar. Which begs the question, why was he so relatively little known on this side of the Atlantic?

Maybe Britain wasn’t ready for a ‘rockstar’ in the kitchen back in the 90s. It’s more likely that, despite Trotter’s flair, imagination and undoubted star quality, he and TV just didn’t mix. However, we don’t really get to the heart of why this was so and why he found solace in writing cookbooks instead. This is just one area that isn’t explored, which is certainly to do with the ninety-minute running time, but also because this is a man seen mainly through rose-tinted specs. This isn’t to speak ill of Trotter himself, merely to suggest that a deeper dive into his persona, with more than just family and friends commenting, would have made for a more balanced article.

What it does do justice to is his single-mindedness – make that bloody-mindedness – and how that enabled him to pioneer in terms of everything from fusion food to making vegetarians just as important as every other restaurant-goer. If it sounds strange to say the latter, it’s really a mark of what he introduced that we take for granted today. Charlie Trotter was ahead of his time when Heston Blumenthal was still peeling spuds.

What is so charming, in contrast to the sheer drive coupled with the typical tyrannical head chef’s attitude in the workplace, is how footage and interviews are woven together with letters and postcards written by Charlie himself. Not only do they let us further into his inner sanctum – at least in the early years – but they also paint a picture of a different era; one where the American Dream was still a distinct possibility, with social media being far from such.

Yes, there’s some real innocence here, and it’s a tribute to the filmmakers that this is on show. It would have been all too easy make this a terrible tragedy, but there is still a lack of balance. It’s also a shame that some other notable moments in this remarkable career don’t get a mention. His stance against the cruel practice of foie gras before certain countries had even thought about banning it, stands out.

Undoubtedly a treat for food enthusiasts, but for other tastes, no more than digestible. Love, Charlie: The Rise and Fall of Chef Charlie Trotter is available on UK digital platforms from April 14.