One doesn’t have to be a restaurant industry insider to enjoy director Rebecca Halpern’s documentary Love, Charlie. Instead, Chicago’s buzzing restaurant scene in the 90s serves as the pressure cooker that finally breaks a man who is fueled and blinded by his ambition.
To tell the story of famed Chicago chef Charlie Trotter, Halpern has assembled a smorgasbord of superstar chefs from Wolfgang Puck to Emeril Lagasse, the latter a peer of Trotter’s at his height. The juiciest gossip comes from Trotter’s former staff, among them Alinea’s Grant Achatz, while his first wife and business partner, Lisa Ehrlich, elicits the documentary’s tear-jerking moments. Chef Reginald Watkins, who passed away in 2020 and was Trotter’s first hire, gives an unvarnished look at his former boss, recalling how he was so obsessed with his goals that he would sleep in the restaurant’s dining room.
Through these interviews and Trotter’s letters, Halpern compiles a portrait of a control freak. It’s a well-balanced characterization, showing both his culinary genius and cruelty. In a meta scene, Trotter spars with his former apprentice, Curtis Duffy, during the filming of Duffy’s documentary For Grace.
The epistolary structure, brought to life by Scott Grossman’s two-dimensional animations that are by turns playful and grotesque, is what elevates the film. Never one to shy away from controversy, Trotter did not hold back his opinions in interviews. In the opening shot of the foie gras wars, he once infamously suggested offering up a rival chef’s fatty liver in lieu of the duck’s. While those interviews showed off Trotter’s pugnacious side, the letters give viewers an honest look inside his mind. Beginning in his youth, we see a man who was determined and romantic. He writes in 1985, “I am just getting too antsy to open a restaurant of my own.” As Trotter ages, the dark humor he penned earlier in his life grows increasingly alarming.
Even after acrimonious battles with their former mentor, Trotter proteges like Achatz do not express any hint of schadenfreude at the once great chef’s downfall. They know they could easily be next, wandering drunk or just disillusioned outside their old establishment.
Perhaps Trotter’s tragic rise and fall were best summed up by one of the only chefs not interviewed in the film, the late Anthony Bourdain.
“Rest In Peace Charlie Trotter,” Bourdain tweeted in 2013. “A giant. A legend. Treated shabbily by a world he helped create. My thoughts go out to those who loved him.” 96 min.
Limited release in theaters and wide release on VOD