TRAILER

When Edward Espe Brown was a boy, he realized there was a significant difference between mass-produced bread and homemade baked bread.

In his early 20s, Brown became the head cook at the Tassajara Mountain Centre in California and has been practicing the art of Zen Buddhism and cooking for more than 40 years. As a chef, he is typically short-tempered and exacting, but as a Buddhist master he is exactly the opposite.

Director Dörrie sets her camera on Espe Brown as he travels from the Scheibbs Buddhist Centre in Austria to Tassajara, offering cooking seminars based upon the principles established 800 years ago by Master Eihei Dogen Zenji, the founder of the Japanese Soto-Zen school. A charming taskmaster who regularly punctures his holiness with moments of self-deprecation and humour, Espe Brown's observations on modern culture, cooking and human foibles are often as acerbic and hilarious as they are profound.