In the new Catherine Zeta-Jones movie, “No Reservations” there are two scenes that grab a lot of attention—and a lot of laughs. In one she storms out of the kitchen and slams an uncooked super-sized steak on a customer’s table after he sent back the filet too many times to the kitchen for not being cooked rare enough! Catherine, without special effects I might add, also pulls off the renowned table-cloth trick, leaving all the cutlery, crockery and crystal glassware intact by yanking it out from underneath. Now just where does a Hollywood actress, who admits to having difficulty making a proper hard-boiled egg, learn that?

Well it turns out that our beloved Thomas Keller, who has his Bouchon restaurant and bakery at the Venetian, was the movie’s consultant! He called upon many of his customer experiences to add authenticity and additions to the script, and wound up teaching the actress, married to Michael Douglas, the table-cloth trick. Catherine worked alongside Thomas in the kitchens of his other restaurants up in Napa Valley’s wine country.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 1st, 2007 at 12:15 pm and is filed under Misc. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.