Described as "Jiro Dreams of Sushi"-meets-"Spellbound" (but with coffee!), "Drip" is an in-the-works documentary currently seeking Kickstarter funding that follows Los Angeles baristas as they compete to make it to the World Barista Championship, the ultimate achievement for serious espresso-making pros.The documentary features L.A. baristas Charles Babinski of Go Get Em Tiger and G&B, Truman Severson and Ryan Redden of Portola Coffee Lab and Eden-Marie Abramowicz of Intelligentsia. Still shooting footage and preparing for post-production, director Rock Baijnuth answered a few questions about the crema and the drama of "Drip." Why a documentary about coffee?There aren’t a lot of things that improve your day. It’s one of maybe a handful of things that make my day better. I'm always at different coffee shops writing films. We set out to do for coffee what "Sideways" did for wine. Maybe people will have espresso parties at their houses and watch the movie.What did you find most surprising or compelling about barista competitions?

How good you have to be is the thing that surprises me, how detailed the scoring can get. It gets down to the minutiae, really specific technical things and the amount they have to balance while performing, being able to give a performance as well as being great at making coffee. How captivated the audiences are by this stuff. It’s a cool niche world that I don’t think a lot of people know about.When did you first get into specialty coffee?I grew up in Toronto and there’s a great coffee bar there called Mercurio. I had an espresso, and I thought, "Now I’m a coffee guy. Man, this is great." I came out here and all my friends are way, way into coffee, maybe way too much. We're always trying to find a new spot and get as much coffee into our systems as possible.How much coffee do you drink a day? I only average about two cups right now. While working on "Drip," the first day we shot I think I had about eight cups. We had filmed a couple guys here -- Frank La and Tommy Kim at Café Dulce -- and they were making drinks they were going to do for a competition.

I don’t think I slept for three days after that first day.What are some of your favorite coffee places in L.A.?I have diff faves for different reasons. Portola, Intelligentsia, G&B Coffee, there are so many. I just kind of got into Caffe Luxxe as well. A friend of mine introduced me to Caffe Luxxe. Those guys' styles are different from anyone. They take this mad scientist approach to coffee over there. Like El Bulli but with coffee.Craft distillers to gather at first L.A. Spirits Expo Belcampo Meat Co. is now open at Grand Central MarketNorwegian teen's tattoo of McDonald's receipt confirms Big Mac IndexIn pitching his six-part docu-series, “Chef’s Table," which debuts April 26 on Netflix, creator David Gelb’s bestselling point was “Jiro Dreams of Sushi,” his 2011 documentary about Tokyo’s most esteemed sushi master, Jiro Ono.Gelb’s promise — to have each of the half-dozen episodes focus on a successful chef with a life story as compelling, doubt-filled and quirk-riddled as Ono’s — is aptly borne out in the cast of characters assembled.

Niki Nakayama of n/naka represents Los Angeles; Attica Restaurant's Ben Shewry is from Melbourne, Australia; and Magnus Nilsson built his reputation in the remote town of Jarpen, Sweden. sushi grade fish tampaOther episodes of “Chef’s Table” will focus on New York’s Dan Barber of Blue Hill Restaurant at Stone Barns and Manhattan, Italy’s Massimo Bottura of Francescana in Modena, and Argentina’s Francis Mallmann. sushi grade fish cambridgeRecently we caught up with Gelb to talk about finding the subjects for “Chef’s Table,” why Bottura’s bullying older brothers can take partial credit for one of his most famous dishes and how “Chef’s Table” and shows such as Bravo’s “Top Chef” have less in common than you’d think.where to buy sushi grade fish manchester

How is “Chef’s Table” different from the dozens of other food-centric television shows? We don’t have a host or a competition format. Each episode is its own documentary and it puts a big burden on the filmmakers to keep it compelling for 45 minutes.jiro dreams of sushi srt file How many people did you go through before ending up with the six you chose? jiro dreams of sushi academy awardsWe have a binder full of chefs. aki sushi port washington order onlineThere are so many awesome chefs in the world right now and they all have incredible stories so it was really a matter of who’s available and willing to give us the time that we need to go in depth.youda sushi chef online full

What sorts of things did you keep in mind while narrowing the field? We wanted the chefs to be pretty much obsessed with what they’re doing. We didn’t want chefs who have a ton of restaurants but who are really focused on the restaurants they do have and are trying to make them perfect. We wanted chefs who mastered the fundamentals, then broke the rules of tradition and made their own cuisine. We also wanted chefs who are in different places in their careers.How far-flung is the range of experience and scope? Massimo Bottura is ranked the No. 3 chef in the world, has three Michelin stars and kind of reinvented the traditional cuisine of Modena, Italy. Niki Nakayama isn’t as well-known on the international scene but she’s an incredible talent, a kind of up-and-comer in Los Angeles who has a completely different take on kaiseki.Dan Barber pioneered the whole farm-to-table movement and is very much an intellectual chef. Francis Mallmann is all about the aesthetic — his fires and his plates are incredibly beautiful.

He doesn’t even really work in a restaurant because he can’t be contained — he just wants to wander through the hills of Patagonia making beautiful fires.What part did their specific dishes play in driving the narrative? To start out, we tried to have a tasting course or eat a bunch of the food to see what it looked like. Then we’d talk to the chefs about which dishes had the most compelling stories. Everything in this series is extremely character driven. We featured the dishes that come from a very personal place in the chef.When Massimo Bottura was a kid his older brothers would chase him around the house because he was the runt of the litter. He’d always end up hiding under a table in the kitchen where his grandmother was making tortellini by hand. She’d defend him with her rolling pin, tell his brothers to get lost. He has this incredibly fond memory of being under the table, seeing the world from this different perspective and stealing tortellini.So he created a dish called “Tortellini Walking On Broth.”

Traditionally, tortellini is maybe 10 to a spoonful. But on this plate he had only six pieces of tortellini so that the eater can appreciate each one. It’s not just about being full or it being delicious, it’s also about the idea behind the food. He’s very much a storyteller through his food. This is really true of all of our chefs.Your father is the general manager of New York’s Metropolitan Opera. Do you think that had something to do with the prominent role that classical music plays in your documentaries? I’m very much influenced by my parents. Before my father was the manager of the Metropolitan Opera, he was the manager of the Boston Symphony Orchestra and he was the leader of the Sony Classical Record label. He always worked with very obsessive artists in the music world.He’d take me on his trips. I went with him to Japan as a kid, which is one of the reasons I was obsessed with sushi. My mom is a recipe chef and a writer for cookbooks. She and Peter Kaminsky worked with Francis on his cookbook, “Seven Fires,” and his new book, “Mallmann on Fire.”

Making “Chef’s Table” must have been like an immersion course in fine cooking. What did you learn?I learned so much about ingredients — like understanding what a piece of high-quality Parmigiano-Reggiano tastes like or what a true balsamic vinegar is. Massimo Bottura’s balsamic vinegar, the finest you can buy in a store, is available at Whole Foods. It’s called Villa Manodori. It turns out that my dad has been using that vinegar when he cooks since I was 13 years old. Finding that out really threw me for a loop.What types of foods film best? With our cameras and lenses and the way we frame it we can pretty much make anything look relatively delicious. The challenge was always, “How do I make it feel like the viewer is there?” Unfortunately there is always going to be the barrier of [the viewer not being able to taste the food]. Not even Smell-a-Vision solves that.What’s the best response you ever got for “Jiro Dreams of Sushi”? “I don’t eat sushi, but I still love the movie.”