With his career and personal life suddenly at crossroads, a once-celebrated L.A. chef embarks on a cross-country culinary odyssey with his best friend and young son in an effort to rediscover his creativity and love for cooking. When he started running the kitchen at trendy Brentwood eatery Gauloises, Carl Casper (Jon Favreau) was on of the hottest chefs to hit the L.A. food scene. Now, a decade later, the restaurant is still always full, but creatively Carl is running on empty. Divorced and disconnected from his 11-year-old son, he's convinced cooking is the only thing he's good at- and he yearns to reignite the spark that made him love doing it in the first place. When he learns that popular food blogger Ramsey Michel (Oliver Platt) is coming to review the restaurant, Carl plans to dazzle him with an adventurous new menu. But the restaurant's owner Rive (Dustin Hoffman), insists he serve the same safe and predictable dishes that have kept the place packed year in and year out. Disappointed at the meal's lack of originality, Ramsey writes a scathing review, which- along with a video of Carl's embarrassing out-of-control response- quickly goes viral. With his illustrious career suddenly reduced to a punch line, Carl finds himself jobless with no prospects for work.