Director Louise Courvoisier has put herself firmly on the film map with this story of young Totone and his little sister, carving out a living in the modern-day Jura countryside after being orphaned. Think the Dardenne  brothers with more sunshine and less angst, a way of life where young calves are transported to market in the front seat of the family car.

La Cocina is one of those films that cuts an excellent trailer, succinctly delivering just enough characters, plot and visual flair to entice an audience that enjoyed recent dramas set in restaurant kitchens like The Bear, Boiling Point and The Menu.

L’Addition, Summerhall ★★★★ 

In Two Minds, Traverse Theatre ★★★★ 

Awarded the best director prize at Cannes last year, Anh Hung Tran has served up cinema’s latest hymn to gastronomy, The Taste of Things. Tasting (and smelling) what’s on the screen is obviously impossible, but even so Tran provides as total a sensory experience as a film can of the religion of haute cuisine and its acolytes. 

FOOD, The Studio ★★★

There’s no denying it: Los Angeles-born Geoff Sobelle is a theatrical magician (quite literally – it’s how he began his career). Through a string of visually spectacular shows on the Fringe and more recently at the International Festival, he’s unleashed wildlife into the streets of Edinburgh, drawn aeons of history from a cardboard box, and even constructed an entire house on stage.

In his mock-poetic manual Peri-Bathos (1728), Alexander Pope opens by describing the afflictions which beset inhabitants of the lower Parnassus. The aristocracy living further up the mountain commit burglaries, and, "taking advantage of the rising ground, are perpetually throwing down rubbish, dirt, and stones upon us, never suffering us to live in peace."

A fine cast, starring Ralph Fiennes as a deranged super-chef along with Anya Taylor-Joy, Nicholas Hoult, Janet McTeer, Rob Yang and an exclusive restaurant serving horror as a main course – it sounds deliciously promising. But although there are some arresting images, this black comedy doesn’t quite deliver.

Ever since her appearance on The Great British Bake Off in 2013, Ruby Tandoh has been a breath of fresh air to the food industry. Unafraid to use her voice and stand up not only for herself but for the marginalised communities she is a part of, she writes at the intersection of politics and food and has been unapologetic about calling out elitism in the industry.

Two years ago, I became preoccupied with beetroot. I didn’t want to eat it, particularly, or learn new ways to cook this crimson-purple veg. Instead I hunted down stories of the “beet-rave”, as it was once called (from the French la betterave), from an earlier time when rave was a root vegetable, and a “wild rave”, instead of a techno-fuelled, all-night dance party, was a horseradish. In his novel Jitterbug Perfume (1984), Tom Robbins describes the beetroot as “the most intense of vegetables”, a “deadly serious” root whose leaking liquid resembles blood.