Food has a starring role in this film

The first time director Scott Hicks walked into the busy kitchen of Fiamma Osteria in New York to do research for "No Reservations," he was overwhelmed. "There were huge boiling pots; there were fires; there was heat. And the noise level . . . I thought, 'There's so much going on. This is total chaos!' " he says.

And so the Australian director, who was nominated for an Academy Award for "Shine," began visiting other kitchens and spending time with Michael White, who was then Fiamma's chef. Eventually, the director began to relax -- especially when he discovered that the shouting is orchestrated by the executive chef. "I wanted to learn every nuance of a restaurant kitchen because I would be re-creating [that] world," Hicks says.

The pressure of the professional kitchen would become part of the job description of Kate (Catherine Zeta-Jones) in her role as executive chef of 22 Bleecker, a Greenwich Village restaurant. In the new film, an American version of the German "Mostly Martha," Kate, an icicle who comes alive only after she's shouted a few orders to her staff, discovers that she has a niece to take care of and a charming sous chef in her kitchen.

For the film, Hicks wanted the menu for his tony French restaurant to reflect what a high-caliber chef would prepare, so he called Lee Anne Wong, executive chef of the French Culinary Institute in New York, to make some food for him. He was treated to an array of delights, including seared diver scallops with a saffron emulsion, butter-poached lobster, and pan-roasted quail with black truffles.

But the enthralled director came up against prop master Diana Burton, who worried that the hot lights of the camera would turn the butter "into a pool of yellow sludge," she says. Burton isn't a professionally trained cook, but she knows a lot about the kitchen.

Butter, in fact, plays an important role in this French kitchen. The imperious Kate asks her new sous chef Nick (Aaron Eckhart), to see if he's the real deal, "What's the most important ingredient in French cuisine?"

Nick's playful response: "Butter . . . butter . . . and . . . butter."

Hicks wanted the actors to know what fine French food tastes like so they could play their roles with authenticity. So Burton, a Brooklyn resident, fresh off a season of serving manicotti and cannoli to Tony Soprano, gathered her staff and re-created Wong's haute cuisine. They served her dishes to the stars, so they would understand exotic tastes like saffron, kaffir lime, quail, and black truffles.

"In the film when I was begging Kate to tell me the secret of her saffron sauce, I felt a real sense of urgency because I had just tasted this unbelievable flavor," says Eckhart.

When the film went into production, Burton's job was to reproduce each dish that the chefs would be making. She ended up cooking them at least 15 times, as the director shot take after take. They had to be identical, down to the angle of the chive on the scallop.

Even though she had gathered ingredients from the finest purveyors in New York, it didn't actually matter what they tasted like. The food just had to look beautiful for a matter of minutes under the bright lights. After those scenes were finished, the provisions went onto background tables, and then were tossed. Considering their cameos under the hot lights, says Burton, it was just too dangerous to eat them.

For the dinner scenes, Burton created real food. That's probably why the extras had satisfied looks on their faces. As for the actors in starring roles, they, too, were eating -- but not always what we thought they were. A rich sauce Kate was tasting was actually applesauce. Instead of taking 15 bites of the luxurious tiramisu, Kate's dessert was practically sugar- and fat-free.

To prepare for the film, Zeta-Jones and Eckhart spent months in the kitchens of Melisse, a French restaurant in Santa Monica, and Fiamma Osteria.

Melisse's chef, Josiah Citrin, and Fiamma's White showed Eckhart how to keep his knuckles back so he wouldn't cut his fingers when chopping and how to stand with slightly bent knees to protect his back during long hours on the unyielding kitchen floor. "It seems like the hardest job in the world because you have to be so precise," says Eckhart. "Catherine is definitely the better cook; she loved buzzing around the kitchen."

Zeta-Jones, who has admitted that she barely knew where the kitchen was before making the film, spent long days at Fiamma, and also waited tables on a busy Saturday.

"Sometimes she'd be annoyed," says White. " 'Some people are so rude,' she'd tell me."

But not everyone. She presented a customer with his order of lamb, and he looked up at her and said, "You look a lot like Catherine Zeta-Jones."

The spurious server replied, "You know, I get that all the time."

Adds White: "With a straight face, Catherine demurely walked back into the kitchen and cracked up."