BAY AREA FLAVORS FOOD TALE / For its new film 'Ratatouille,' Pixar explored our obsession with cuisine

The Bay Area is so obsessed with food that just finding the latest cheese, the tangiest sourdough or the richest coffee is enough to spark passionate debates.

So it's no surprise that Emeryville filmmakers tapped into Northern California's bountiful culinary scene to make "Ratatouille," the animated movie about a rat who wants to be a chef. The film opens nationwide Friday.

For six years, members of Pixar Animation Studios took classes at Bay Area cooking schools and channeled the artistry of Thomas Keller, the chef/owner of Napa Valley's critically acclaimed French Laundry restaurant.

The Disney-Pixar film already has charmed local critics and viewers. But filmmakers are banking on the fact that people across the country have spent enough prime time with the Food Network's Emeril Lagasse and Rachael Ray, and have wallowed sufficiently in the televised woes of wannabe top chefs, to appreciate the rarefied atmosphere of a Michelin three-star restaurant.

Movie executives believe that even kids are ready to ditch the annual summer superhero for a gastronome with whiskers and a tail.

"I think there is less mystery about chefs now than there was years ago," said Brad Lewis, the movie's producer, who lives in San Carlos and moonlights as the Peninsula town's vice mayor.

"Food is a much more popular subject these days. It's not so high-falutin'."

Keller agrees. Even though he's one of the world's most renowned chefs, he had no formal culinary school training. In some ways, that mirrors the movie's story line, which is as much about confidence and a can-do attitude as it is about haute cuisine.

The movie's plot goes something like this: After watching his culinary guru, Auguste Gusteau, on television, Remy the rat dreams of becoming a chef in a five-star Parisian restaurant. He has a fabulous sense of smell and a palate to match -- no food from the rubbish bin for this persnickety rodent.

When Gusteau suddenly dies, Remy finds himself coming to the rescue. But folks don't take kindly to rats running around a kitchen, so Remy has to content himself with working incognito.

At his direction, his pal Linguini, the lowly garbage boy, whips up wonderful dishes that resurrect the restaurant's star stature. And when Ego, a pompous food critic, decides to review the place, Remy pulls out all the stops by creating a nouveau version of the classic ratatouille, a working-class Provencal vegetable stew.

"The central challenge was making food look appetizing in animation," said Lewis, adding that when it came to the actual ratatouille, it really had to be spectacular.

For inspiration and authenticity, they went to Keller. The Yountville chef tutored the film's creators on the inner workings of a French kitchen and acted as the key consultant for the cooking. Producer Lewis, who interned in the French Laundry kitchen as part of his research for the film, gave the chef an extra challenge.

"I asked him how he would prepare the ratatouille if he knew the most famous critic in the world was coming in to the restaurant," he said.

Keller noted that ratatouille is generally served as a side dish, but he realized that for the movie, it had to be a showstopper. So he focused on what he calls "confit byaldi," a fancy version of the stew. He sliced each vegetable paper-thin and then stacked the pieces like a tiny sculpture.

"I had been thinking about it for a while," Keller said. "But it all came together at once."

The results seemed to pique the appetite of 10-year-old, hot-dog-loving Drake Johnson, who attended a sneak preview of the movie in San Francisco.

"I never had ratatouille before," he said. "But it looked so good, I'd like to try it."

Daniel Baumstein, 8, said the movie made him hungry.

His mom, Alicia Sullivan, thought the theme "anyone can cook" was perfect.

A lot of the culinary elements of the film might be too sophisticated for some, she said, but the overall message is universal -- if you put your mind to something, you can do it.

And, she said, "Who doesn't like food, hasn't wanted to cook, or fallen in love with a small animal?"

Ratatouille's screenwriter and director, Brad Bird of Marin County, said that when he was asked to join the project, he didn't know much about fine dining.

"I had to cram," said Bird, the Academy Award-winning director of "The Incredibles." "I took friends who knew about cooking out for beers, and I studied."

Besides researching in the Bay Area, filmmakers went to Paris, where they ate at five top restaurants, including Guy Savoy. Lewis said some chefs served up to 29 courses.

"It was beautiful but painful," he said. "Typically we'd go in the morning, watch the deliveries, and look behind the scenes while cooks prepped. Then we went back for lunch and dinner."

Back in Northern California, the entire team of 150 took a series of cooking classes to learn how chefs hold their knives, stir their pots and command the stoves. Animators re-created a French kitchen, complete with sauce and pastry stations.

To pay homage to the cooking profession, the filmmakers used Keller's voice for the role of a restaurant patron. The French version of the movie has chef Guy Savoy playing the part; the Spanish one substitutes the voice of El Bulli chef Ferran Adria. In the British version, "The Naked Chef" Jamie Oliver has a cameo as the restaurant inspector.

Initially, Bird said, "all the cooking stuff" seemed like it might be too much inside baseball.

Maybe not in Northern California, where eating well is seen as vital to the body and soul.

"I liked the notion that you are what you eat," said the director, who insisted that Pixar expand on the epicurean theme. "Not just food, but that you are the sum total of what you choose to take in."

So what, exactly, is ratatouille, the dish that's central to Disney-Pixar's new rat-turned-chef movie?

Traditionally, ratatouille is a late-summer dish from Provence, incorporating the mainstays of the harvest in that southern French region -- tomatoes, eggplant, onions, bell peppers, zucchini, garlic and fresh herbs, simmered in local olive oil.

The vegetables can be cooked together or separately and then combined. The dish can be served either hot or at room temperature as a side dish, spread or garnish.

In Turkey, cooks prepare imam biyaldi, in which the eggplant acts as a shell to hold the vegetable filling. The name translates as "the cleric swooned" -- presumably with pleasure when the dish was served.