That is just one of the troubles weighing on the chef of the title, Dori (Gal Toren). His buyers can’t source the ingredients he needs; his pastry chef, a rising star, wants more attention; his primary lover, the wife of a potential business partner, is getting fed up with him.
Into this familiar scenario comes Nimrod (Guri Alfi), an unemployed 44-year-old coder who has aged out of Tel Aviv’s tech sector and is working as a valet parking attendant. Given a tryout at the lowest rungs of the Sophia kitchen, he catches on, becoming our surrogate eyes and ears. Most important, he catches the eye of Dori, who responds to Nimrod’s feistiness and his willingness to speak his mind.
The early episodes of “The Chef” are built around the slowly growing, prickly relationship between these two men at opposite ends of the kitchen hierarchy. Dori is amused by Nimrod and wants to help him out, but he also blithely takes advantage of Nimrod’s enthusiasm and financial hardship. Nimrod is drawn to Dori’s swagger and talent, but he also sees him for the toxic narcissist he is — Nimrod’s blank gaze as he observes Dori’s relentless philandering is part rebuke, part envy.
Neither of these characters is new or startling; Dori, in particular, is someone we have seen before, with his stew of ego, restlessness and insecurity bordering on paranoia. But they are written with a fair degree of subtlety and given nuanced portrayals by Toren, who brings a bullish grace to Dori, and Alfi, who captures Nimrod’s barbed amiability.
The rapport between the two contributes to an overall air of authenticity; it is dangerous for a non-initiate to venture an opinion on how realistically a show portrays a restaurant, but it is safe to say that “The Chef” has a lived-in immediacy in its scenes of kitchen process and office squabbling. (The front of the house is virtually never seen, at least in the early going.) Kav-el, who directs, and Guy Raz, his cinematographer, exhibit a visual and tonal sensibility that is both casual and cinematic; they hold your interest, though sometimes scenes go on longer, and with less happening, than American television viewers are used to.
