a delicious taste of pre-fame Anthony Bourdain

What a mouth-watering prospect this is. Rock star chef Anthony Bourdain, who tragically took his own life in 2018 at the age of 61, was the best of us: funny, intrepid and with a natural warmth that glowed from the screen. His globe-trotting documentaries took us to places we may never otherwise see and showed us that a hole-in-the-wall joint can be just as special as a posh restaurant, if not more so. The idea of an A24 mini biopic that depicts his pre-fame years as a disaffected dishwasher in Provincetown, Cape Cod, then, is as tantalising as an ice-cold beer.

For the most part, director and co-writer Matt Johnson (BlackBerry, Nirvanna The Band The Show The Movie) serves up the goods. Set in 1975, Tony is a riotous coming-of-age tale that introduces its subject (played by The Holdovers‘ Dominic Sessa) as a feckless wannabe writer studying at Vassar College, New York State. Having failed to secure a summer-long NYC writing scholarship, he nevertheless tells everyone he was successful and, unbeknownst to his family, sets off to Cape Cod in pursuit of the girl of his dreams (Nancy, played by Emilia Jones). The fact that he has no money or plan to support himself is just the start of his problems.

After a night of drunken buffoonery, he winds up at The Flagship, a seafood gaff run by a mysterious chef (Antonio Banderas) who’s as dishy as the pots that Tony finds himself washing. The action is adapted from Bourdain’s bestselling 2000 memoir Kitchen Confidential: Adventures In The Culinary Underbelly and some fans were concerned that Johnson (who knew little of Bourdain before taking on the project) might oversalt the stew. They needn’t have worried: this breakneck service gallops along with lashings of classic rock, deliciously naughty gags and an evocative ’70s colour palette of oranges, creams and browns. And if it seems at all reminiscent of The Bear, that’s only because the revelatory Kitchen Confidential drew the template for the Chicago-set show in the first place.

In any case, it’s Sessa’s performance that really carries the film. Tony opens with a quote in which Bourdain outlines just how obnoxious he was in his youth – and Johnson sets out to prove it. In another actor’s hands, the leather jacket-clad 19-year-old could just seem like an unbearable dickhead, but Sessa offers glimpses of the vulnerability that made his character so compelling in real life. Bourdain’s worst traits are further offset by an enjoyably ribald turn from Leo Woodall as Sal, the walking disaster of a cook who makes Tony look like a saint.

The movie does have a woman problem though. Like Johnson’s last film, Nirvanna The Band The Show The Movie, this story is almost exclusively about male bonding. Beyond the underwritten love interest and Bourdain’s mum, Gladys – a two-dimensional baddie – the relentlessly macho atmosphere can become stifling. That’s a shame, because on the whole this is a smartly scripted, beautifully crafted movie. So, although it’s a little shy of a Michelin star, Tony is still a mightily satisfying feast.