A widowed chef from Shanghai travels with his son to a tiny town in Finland in order to pay his debt to a Finnish friend. But when nobody seems to know the man he’s looking for, Cheng (Pak Hon Chu) starts to help out in the kitchen of the failing local diner. His cooking soon wins over the grizzled locals, who hitherto regarded foreign food as a direct assault on their Finnish manhood. And his thoughtful, gentle personality captures the heart of diner owner Sirkka (Anna-Maija Tuokko).
This is soupy, romantic slop from Mika Kaurismäki, the kind of photogenic sentimentality that tends to feature heavily on the menu of Lasse Hallström’s films. And yet if it’s cinematic comfort food you seek, there’s something rather soothing about this tale of a sad stranger embraced by a community who unquestioningly welcome him as one of their own.