There have been dozens of you-are-there restaurant shows, but none of them have had a character as memorable as Georges Perrier, the French chef who for 40 years ran Le Bec-Fin in Philadelphia.
The now-closed Le Bec-Fin was one of the few grande dame restaurants in this country — elite, elaborate, formal. Over a three-year period Erika Frankel filmed Perrier as he lorded over the dining room and berated the staff in the kitchen, trying to keep his tradition alive.
Perrier’s behavior is terrible at times, but he’s a lovable tyrant; his reaction to a woman who requests her steak tartare “medium rare” is priceless. Frankel has a fine eye for telling detail, and the result, while sentimental, is as irresistible as the dessert cart.