A food critic can dish it out, but can he take it? Pain is on the menu for a writer when his nasty review pushes a chef over the edge in Bitter Feast, a gut-churning thriller from the creators of the indie sensations Virgil Bliss and Wendy and Lucy. The movie, featuring a performance by superstar chef Mario Batali, will be served up on DVD from Dark Sky Films and MPI Media Group, with an SRP of $24.98, on January 4, 2011. It will also be available the same date on Video on Demand.
Writer-director Joe Maggio (Paper Covers Rock, Virgil Bliss) takes the current media and Internet obsession with chefs-as-stars and puts a darkly comic and scary spin on it. Notorious and influential food blogger J.T. Franks (Joshua Leonard, Humpday, The Blair Witch Project, Hatchet) writes a particularly vicious review that doesn’t sit well at all with its subject, Peter Grey (James LeGros of Zodiac, TV’s Mercy and HBO’s upcoming Mildred Pierce), a chef whose career is already on a down slide and may not survive this latest blow.

So the temperamental, egotistical chef concocts an elaborate and deadly revenge scheme. Grey kidnaps Franks and chains him in a remote cabin in the woods, where he forces him to prepare deceptively simple dishes – from eggs over easy to medium-rare steak – then tortures him sadistically for anything less than perfection. A tense thrill-ride prepared with wicked wit and culinary flare, BITTER FEAST is an exploration of the creative impulse gone tragically and ferociously awry.

BITTER FEAST, which had its world premiere at the 2010 Los Angeles Film Festival, was produced by acclaimed director-producer Larry Fessenden (The Last Winter, House of the Devil, Wendy and Lucy) along with producing partners Peter Phok and Brent Kunkle through their production outfit Glass Eye Pix. Fessenden also co-stars in this tense shocker, along with Mario Batali of “Iron Chef” fame.