Do you think that the detail of Ratatouille is authentic? Tell us what you think at the foot of this article

I thought that the foodie animation Ratatouille, about a French rat with culinary gift and fierce aspiration was extremely true to life. It’s certainly the best foodie animation movie I’ve seen. My absolute favourite foodie film is Peter Greenaway’s The Cook the Thief His Wife and Her Lover, but it’s not a children’s film!

I hear that the Ratatouille team spent months in the fantastic restaurant Le Taillevent in Paris. That they researched so thoroughly really comes out in details such as the authenticity of the cold room and the relationship among staff. The hierachy of the kitchen, in particular, was spot-on, with the dynamics between the chef, the “chosen few” and the right and left-hand people.

Rémy, the lead rat, is extremely passionate about food and I loved that about him. Passion is the key thing I look for when I’m interviewing chefs; the rest is detail. The character of the sous-chef Colette really worked. I liked her nononsense attitude in such a male-dominated world. When I was younger I used to have dreams, quite literally, about helping a girl to be a head chef.

I thought the way the food itself was presented was excellent. The most poignant moment for me was when the top restaurant critic [Anton Ego, voiced by Peter O’Toole] comes in and tastes this magnificent dish which triggers a journey in time, a flashback to him coming home as a child at the end of a long day, cold and hungry, having fallen off his bicycle, to steaming hot food. That is what good food should do: take you back to a place you haven’t been to for a long time.

The only thing that scared me about the film was the rats themselves. When I started 30 years ago they were getting on top of the rat situation in London restaurants. Until then they used to be cleared out of one restaurant – and then move immediately next door, so I never experienced them first hand. They do make a big point in the movie about the chef’s fear of the rats, which is something I certainly share.

I have never eaten rat and I will never knowingly eat a rat, although I read an interesting story in The Times this week about people serving up dormice in Calabria. (Fifteen restaurateurs face charges after food inspectors were served dormouse. In their defence the restaurateurs said that it was rat in the stew, as dormice are protected in Italy.)

Unlike rat, ratatouille, the food, is wonderful, especially if it’s cooked in the South of France, where it is made when the tomatoes are at their ripest. But it is one of the most abused dishes. People try to chop it up very fine and it’s meant to be a hearty dish. When they present it in the film it is very fine, which is not authentic. It’s much too highly polished for real ratatouille, which is brilliant one-pot cooking.

The weekend after we saw the film I cooked it for my children who are 9, 10, 11 and 24, even though one of them doesn’t really like tomatoes. Suddenly, inspired by Rémy, they all wanted it! So if it encourages children to eat vegetables, that’s great. The beauty is that it tastes great cold the next day with jacket potatoes and sour cream.

Chris Galvin is chef patron at Bistro Deluxe, Baker Street and Galvin at Windows restaurant, the Hilton, Park Lane

As told to Alex O’Connell

Do you think that the detail of Ratatouille is authentic? Tell us what you think below

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