10 Movies and TV shows like Hunger: Netflix’s ‘Hunger’ takes a deep dive into the culinary industry. While following the underdog character of Aoy, it becomes a resonating film about her journey toward fame and recognition. Kongdej Jaturanrasamee’s script explores class disparities and makes us think about our eating choices and habits. As a result, it becomes yet another film about the ‘Eat the Rich’ theme.

Through Sitisiri Mongkolsiri’s expert direction, Hunger makes up for an intense drama – where cooking becomes a stressful task rather than a stress-relieving endeavor. Besides exploring the central theme of culinary arts, the script also explores the nature of success and ambition. Through Aoy’s character, the film talks about the moral complications of fame in today’s image-obsessed world.

Here are a few suggestions of movies and TV shows that explore similar themes, like Hunger on Netflix. However, please note that these are not all ‘food-related’ films. They are similar either in their directorial approach, their critique of class disparities, their connection to other themes explored in Hunger, or a mix of more than one of these factors.

1) Boiling Point (2021)

Philip Barantini’s ‘Boiling Point’ is probably the work that paved the way for the ‘traumatic kitchen’ dramas. It follows Andy Jones (played by Stephen Graham), the head chef of a London restaurant, on one of the busiest nights of the year. On this dreadful night, he manages his dysfunctional kitchen crew while also coping with the added stress of a surprise visit from a health inspector, strange demands from his customers, and financial woes in his personal life. As a result, the film is filled to the brim with anxiety.

Yet, it sustains the tension throughout its one-and-half-hour duration for many reasons. The film excels due to its rounded characters and its neatly-used one-take technique. Besides, the script keeps stacking up one high-pressure scenario over another one, which takes almost every crew member to the point of emotional breakdown. Like Sitisiri Mongkolsiri’s Hunger, Boiling Point presents the grueling inner-working of a professional kitchen, where dysfunction breathes and stress resides.

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2) The Bear (2022)

Hulu’s ‘The Bear’ is one of the finest series to have come out in the last year. Starring Jeremy Allen White in the central role, it follows Carmine, a young chef from the fine dining world, who moves back to Chicago to take care of their family’s sandwich shop. Carmine struggles with grief over a recent death in his family while coping with the overwhelming emotions he feels toward this person. On the other hand, he has difficulties handling his staff for being attuned to handling a different type of work regime.

Christopher Storer aces directing its boiler room set-up with a series of emotional ups and downs of its characters. Carmine’s kitchen often seems like a battleground between all the crew members’ egos, unresolved traumas, and unfulfilled potentials. Anyhow, like Netflix’s Hunger, it explores the stressful world of a professional kitchen through a humanist lens, where the love for preparing food has more than one reason.

3) Dinner Rush (2000)

Bob Giraldi’s ‘Dinner Rush’ occurs mostly in a restaurant from Tribeca, New York. Louis Cropa (played by Danny Aiello) decides to turn this family-owned restaurant into one of the hot spots in the city. Meanwhile, he also works as a part-time bookmaker, which gives him a certain stature in the community. The film simultaneously follows several narrative threads and weaves them together with a finesse akin to Hyperlink cinema master Robert Altman’s work.

Like Hunger, Dinner Rush follows a kitchen crew working tirelessly to cater to their customers. On one hand, its traditional customers seek simplicity from the food, while on the other hand, chef Udo Cropa (played by Edoardo Ballerini) seeks innovation. The script presents these different outlooks toward food. Besides, it also shows the bratty, self-aggrandizing food critics, whose scrutinies are adored by the pretentious crowd of experience-seekers.

While following a fairly stressful narrative, what strikes out as the funniest in Dinner Rush is the way even the most terrifying events are seen, almost as if they are part of the characters’ everyday lives.

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4) The Menu (2022)

Mark Mylod’s ‘The Menu’ follows a young couple, Margot (played by Anya Taylor-Joy) and Tyler (played by Nicholas Hoult), who enter an exclusive restaurant situated on a remote island. They and an array of affluent guests gather to get a feast from terrifying Chef Slowik (played by Ralph Fiennes). He commands respect for his food and expects the guests to savor it instead of devouring it within moments. His elaborate set-ups demand attention on their own, while ‘hunger’ remains secondary.

Through a series of surprises, The Menu digs deeper into the ‘Eat the Rich’ theme. It begins with the exclusivity of the gathering itself. Like Hunger, it explores how worth is associated with one’s food choices and palates. It scrutinizes people from different social strata with regard to their opinions about food. Besides, like Chef Paul, Slowik is also an obnoxious perfectionist whose past dictates his close-minded outlook toward the world. The Menu potently conveys the horror in the kitchen and becomes a stress-inducing exercise, all the while being rich with subtext about class disparities.

5) Whiplash (2014)

Damien Chazelle’s ‘Whiplash’ tells the story of Andrew Neiman (played by Miles Teller), a young drummer who aspires to reach the heights of his childhood idol. He enrolls in a music conservatory to find a path in that direction. However, to reach that stage, he needs to fight the grueling practice exercises conducted by their mentor, Terence Fletcher (played by J K Simmons). Fletcher’s unconventional techniques break Andrew’s confidence and push him to insanity to seek perfection.

While Whiplash has nothing to do with the art of food-making, the mentor-mentee relationship is similar to what we witness in Hunger between Aoy and Chef Paul. Like Aoy, Andrew commits to his art and goes through grueling training led by a dictatorial Fletcher. The learning sequences in both films are filled with tension that makes you sweat by merely seeing their reactions. So, the Damien Chazelle film is a good choice for you if you liked Hunger as a brutal, tense thriller.

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6) Industry (2020)

HBO’s ‘Industry’ may seem like the most unconventional choice in this list. After all, it is not even remotely related to the culinary world and follows young, recently graduated bankers instead. However, the cutthroat industry of investment banking is just as brutal as the culinary world. The work is just as demanding, and the tension is palpable. The anxiety-inducing work environment will give you a Deja Vu to what you witness in Chef Paul’s kitchen

These newly graduated bankers compete for a limited number of full-time employment opportunities at Pierpoint, a top investment bank in London. It breathes competition into their veins and makes them betray their morals to the point they forget who they were before that. Like Sitisiri Mongkolsiri’s Hunger, Industry also presents the nature of ambition in the modern world – where hunger to reach heights is more important than anything else.

7) Jiro Dreams of Sushi (2011)

One of the central conflicts in Sitisiri Mongkolsiri’s Hunger is the mentor-mentee relationship between Chef Paul and his crew members. You will find the same in ‘Jiro Dreams of Sushi’ that follows revered sushi chef Jiro Ono. He demands the utmost discipline from his disciples and seeks nothing but perfection from them. It presents Jiro’s relationship with his eldest son, Yoshikazu, who has trouble living up to Jiro’s legacy. It is just as brutal as Chef Paul’s relationship with Aoy, who struggles to live up to his standards.

Like Hunger, the 2011 documentary explores the troubles of apprenticeship in an intensely demanding kitchen environment. Both these chefs expect finesse over chaos and want nothing but perfection from the crew. While Chef Jiro does not break the moral compass as Chef Paul does, he intimidates his staff to the point they begin to value their work and expect perfection from themselves.

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8) The Gleaners and I (2000)

The reason why Hunger impacts more is its explorations of class relations with respect to food. Agnes Varda’s amusingly narrated documentary film, ‘The Gleaners and I,’ does the same while following the world of gleaners from France. Inspired by an 1867 painting by Jean-Francois Millet, Agnes travels to the French countryside to find the traces of these communities in her present. While doing so, she dwells upon several aspects of this mode of livelihood, which became illegal by the end of the 20th century in several parts of the country.

The community activities mainly involved women scavenging through the surplus in the fields to feed themselves and their families. Agnes studies how the communities fail to recreate these amidst the modern-age limitations of laws and businesses and explores it in different parts of about 1999-France. The film makes some biting remarks related to food and hunger by focusing on the aspects of food wastage and the decline of this community due to several legalities.

9) Tampopo (1985)

Juzo Itami’s ‘Tampopo‘ does not follow the world of a high-end professional kitchen like Hunger does. It rather follows two truck drivers who stumble upon a small ramen shop during one of their travels. They meet a woman named Tampopo, who runs this family-owned business to feed her and her young son after her husband’s death. So, food means a way to earn more than an artistic ritual for her. The older brother decides to help her make it an enterprise by helping her learn ramen-making as an art.

Tampopo fights her way into the male-dominated world of ramen shop owners. Like Hunger, Tampopo (the film) also explores these gender roles and mocks the stringent social prejudices about food. It takes a hilarious & bizarre tour through different worlds involving food to explore how every preparation and consumption decision is considered relative to one’s social position. While doing so, it talks about our relationship with food and hunger while following a woman’s journey to fulfill her ambition.

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10) Burnt (2015)

John Wells’s Burnt follows hothead, arrogant but talented chef Adam Jones (played by Bradley Cooper), who falls from grace due to his arrogance. Steven Knight’s script digs deeper into the root cause of his impulsive behavior and tries to reason it with his awful past. Like Hunger’s chef Paul, Adam’s present behavior is a result of his traumatic childhood and early adulthood. It made him consider the art of food-making as his high calling.

Burnt does not examine food from a social standpoint or has any deeper insights about it. It also lacks originality and the depth to make its damaged-man tale memorable. However, it features appetizing shots of food preparations and portrays the lives of cooking professionals to show their utmost dedication to this art. So, in case you liked Hunger for this particular reason and want to watch an American film in that lane, Hunger can definitely be your choice.