When Did Shows and Movies About Food Get So Horny?

There’s a lot of sexy things happening in Tran Anh Hung’s latest film The Taste of Things, a romance between Eugenie (a luminous Juliette Binoche), a chef, and Dodin (Benoît Magimel), the gourmand she works for. Their chemistry is crackling (perhaps since the two actors were a couple decades ago) in every scene they share. And if you’ve ever wanted to see Binoche sponge-bathe herself, this is the film for you. But perhaps the sexiest moment in the film, and maybe of the year, is after Eugenie falls ill, Dodin cooks for the woman who has kept him nourished for so long. It’s a lavish, thoughtful meal. When Dodin asks a glowing Eugenie if he can watch her eat—it raises the temperature at least 10 degrees.

In the last several months, there’s been a swell in food-related media from television and film, books and theater, and even fashion. What sets these projects apart from the usual buffet of food-themed pop culture is that, well, many of these things are downright horny.

What kicked off this delicious trend? Jeremy Allen White’s sad boy chef Carmy Berzatto in FX’s The Bear might have been the initial lynchpin. While Season 1 was both critically and commercially lauded, Season 2, which premiered this summer, is a nearly perfect season of television. That second run of episodes also managed to somehow make everyone thirstier for Allen White’s tatted-up, emotionally broken Carm, which Allen White certainly helped with his parade of shirtless workout photos during the SAG-AFTRA strike.

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