Roll credits. FoodLab 2010: Hard Cooking with a Vengeance. FoodLab 2010: Revenge of the French. FoodLab 2010: Molecular Gastrology Boogaloo, whatever you want to call it, this flick is finally finished, or is it?
Plot summary: Beautiful, young, innocent girl (hey, it's my movie), struggles through the horrors of molecular gastronomy cooking. Facing constant shame, frustration, and indigestion, she battles the metric system matrix, needs to solve a Da Vinci Code of ingredients and cooking instructions, discovers an underground French conspiracy against America, and eventually, with the help of her French translators from the last post, falls in love with her only ally -- oddly enough, a French-speaking monkey from Fairfax, Virginia, named ThinkGeek.
In the final scene, she sends the evil molecular gastronomy cooking kit back to Hell, which in this movie just happens to be located in Dijon, France, to the sinister castle of its creators, Cuisine Innovation. Whew! Now, she and ThinkGeek can live happily ever after.
Cue music and title card: (bum, bum, bummmm!) ...or can they?
See the final scene (letter to the French at Cuisine Innovation) and the FoodLab 2010 roundup after the jump.
Dear Cuisine Innovation,
I am returning your Molecular Gastronomy Starter Kit in hopes that I will receive a full apology for the pain and frustration your inferior product has put me through for almost three months, and where it will no longer taint the rich, American soil upon which cheeseburgers, Mickey Mouse, and blockbuster movies (including those with Jerry Lewis) were born.
Problems with your product included, but were not limited to:
- Ingredients impossible to acquire in the U.S.A. Examples: Banana juice and Get 27®
- The requirement of additional supplies costing upwards of $100 U.S. dollars in addition to the substandard product's original cost. Examples: precision scale and gas charger.
- A confusing conversion table that varied by chemical and combined your invasive metric system with smidgens, pinches, and dashes.
- Brochure printing that was difficult if not impossible to read. Examples: light yellow on white and black on brown.
Feel free to read complete product and recipe reviews by searching "FoodLab 2010" at www.phoenixnewtimes.com.
I am requesting you take immediate action in submitting your apology to the e-mail or address below in addition to ceasing production of your molecular cooking set, unworthy of hard-earned American dollars, in an effort to correct its shortcomings and regain America's trust in the French.
Sincerely,
Laura Hahnefeld
Miss out on any of the back story to this foodie fable? Check out the complete listing of FoodLab follies below:
Part1: The Kit of Chemicals and a Letter to the French
Part 2: Eating Your Positive Lab Results
Part 3: The Metric System and Chantilly Cream
Part 4: Sparkling Carmel Cold Medicine