His hero is Hassan Haji, a poor Muslim born to a loving, rambunctious West Bombay family, transplanted to London and then to Lumière, Morais' fictional, picture-postcard-perfect town in the Alps.
Hassan turns out to have "that mysterious something that comes along in a chef once a generation. Don't you understand? He is one of those rare chefs who is simply born. He is an artist. He is a great artist," gasps the French chef Madame Mallory, the exacting proprietor of the two-star Le Saule Pleureur, the weeping willow. Mallory is capable of "a uniquely Gallic look of nuclear contempt of one's inferiors," but she understands talent, and wants Hassan as her sous-chef and culinary heir.
In his innate skills and earnest regard, even in his horrific loss of a loving mother, Hassan resembles the hero of Slumdog Millionaire, though he turns out to be more skilled, and less obsessed, with wooing beautiful women. (He eats one meal "with my then-girlfriend, the thick-thighed Marie, who smelled of mushrooms.") Reading Journey - to be honest, I devoured this delectable book in a couple of sittings - it was difficult not to imagine that movie's star, actor Dev Patel, as Hassan.
A movie, it turns out, is precisely Morais' intent, as he notes in the book acknowledgments, having wished to make a movie with his friend, the late producer Ismail Merchant, "that combined his love of food with his love of filmmaking. I would help in this endeavor. Sadly, Ismail died before I finished this book, but it is my sincere hope that one day The Hundred-Foot Journey will make it to the screen."
