In Jon Favreau's new film, "Chef," the writer-director-star plays Carl Casper, a formerly adventurous and celebrated chef who's since stagnated in both his career and his relationship with his ex-wife and young son. An unexpected thrashing from Los Angeles' most prominent restaurant critic (and a major social media meltdown) sends Casper running for the open road - in a food truck - in search of his next course of action.

Favreau didn't just tie on an apron and step into the role as a seasoned chef. He put in hard hours on the line in chef Roy Choi's kitchens and food trucks, and brought him on as a consultant to achieve authenticity in everything from knife technique to kitchen culture.

Eatocracy spoke with Favreau about his lifelong obsession with food, connecting with family and the lengths he'll go to for a killer brisket. An edited transcript is below.

Eatocracy: Your character in the film spends a lot of time cooking food for people to show them how he feels about them. How conscious was that?

Jon Favreau: I had been thinking about the film “Eat Drink Man Woman” and Roy Choi pointed me to “Mostly Martha.” It's a German film about a female chef who is a complete emotional basket case and could not communicate, but had such passion in her food. She would feed everyone around her. It's almost like someone who couldn't speak scribbling on a piece of paper like in "The Piano."

There's something romantic about that and I think it’s reflective of what I've seen in the chefs I've known. The most accurate, sincere communicating they do is through their food.
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“Within a few minutes, I spot a rabbit and make my first kill with the bow and arrow. It’s not my usual clean shot through the eye, but I’ll take it,” says the narrator in “The Hunger Games.”

“The Hunger Games” is the wildly popular trilogy of dystopian novels by Suzanne Collins – and the narrator is not a stereotypical camouflage-clad hunter; she’s a 16-year-old girl.

The eagerly anticipated first film of the series hits theaters on March 23, and with the growing popularity of protagonist Katniss Everdeen, aims to shoot down conventional ideas of people who hunt.
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Fame Bites goes inside the belly of the entertainment beast. We're dishing out where the celebrities are eating, what they're eating and who they're eating with.

Though he lives in Colorado now, Jeff Austin will always call Chicago home, and that, perhaps, is a rather unlikely place to spawn a professional mandolin player. On the other hand, the Windy City is ripe for churning out foodies, and if you follow Jeff on Twitter, you’ll know that food is one of his favorite topics.

Most people, however, simply know him as one-fourth of the Nederland, Colorado-based Yonder Mountain String Band with which he tirelessly tours to audiences around the world.

When the progressive bluegrass band rolled through Atlanta on their current Cabin Fever Tour, CNN joined Jeff for dinner at Rathbun Steak where we managed to order probably enough food to heartily feed everyone in attendance at their sold out show at The Tabernacle. Alas, nothing was left but bones...

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Kansas City rapper Mac Lethal took the internet by storm last week with a one-two punch of a blistering rendition of "Look at Me Now" and a Tumblr called "Texts from Bennett."

While the authenticity of "Bennett" is a matter of some dispute, the 30-year-old Mac Lethal (a.k.a. David Sheldon) brooks no argument over his skills as an MC or as a home chef. As Lethal spits mad rhymes in an uninterrupted take, he cooks up what looks to be flawless pancakes in his home kitchen, suggesting his comfort serving up both beats that are fresh and beets that are tasty.

As longstanding fans of the intersection of hip-hop and cuisine, we asked Mac Lethal to drop some knowledge about his culinary life.
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