Ruth Reichl

As the unabashed cradle of Hollywood superficiality and smoggy urban sprawl, Los Angeles has long been condemned as a cultural wasteland. In the richly penetrating documentary odyssey City of Gold, Pulitzer Prize-winning food critic Jonathan Gold shows us another Los Angeles, where ethnic cooking is a kaleidoscopic portal to the mysteries of an unwieldy city and the soul of America.

Eat This New York is the story of two best friends' struggle to open a restaurant in the food capital of the world. As Billy Phelps and John McCormick suffer through financial crisis, the loss of their chef, and a crumbling relationship, the filmmakers turn the camera on New York City's legendary restaurateurs who prove that dreams can come true. Billy and John's gamble to open a restaurant together takes shape on Division Street, a unique block in Brooklyn that separates the Satmar Jewish community of Williamsburg from the Latino neighborhood of the South Side. During the course of a year, they convert a former check-cashing shop located under the elevated train tracks of the J/M/Z subway lines into a retro speakeasy. But before the restaurant is fully built they come close to bankruptcy and almost call it quits on their friendship.

Follow Alice Waters through a year of shopping and cooking, and discover the vision of an artist and advocate, who has taken her gift for food and turned it into consciousness about the environment, nutrition and a device for social change.