Don McKellar, Lisa Ray and Seema Biswas star in this movie about a diplomatic Canadian couple in Delhi who have a strange relationship with their new cook and servant. Part foodie movie, part meditation on social justice, this debut feature from Dilip Mehta looks good and features solid performances, but it may not satisfy your deepest hunger for meaning.

Starring: Don McKellar, Lisa Ray, Seema Biswas

Rating: Three Stars out of five

Time to put on elasticized pants: Foodie movies are all the rage.

From the buttery scenes of Julie & Julia to this week's release of Cooking With Stella, filmmakers have rediscovered the simple pleasure - not to mention easy eye candy - that comes with food preparation.

We all like to eat, and we all like to watch delicious food being prepared. It's a primal thing, no doubt, and Dilip Mehta uses this sensual pleasure as the front door to his narrative feature debut.

Set against the textured backdrop of Delhi, India, the movie opens with Michael (Don McKellar) and Maya (Lisa Ray) moving into their new home: a government compound in a nice part of the capital city.

The Canadian couple have a young daughter, and in the opening frames, we learn the central caregiver isn't mom, but dad. Mom is a high-ranking diplomat who spends her days working. Dad, on the other hand, stays at home and tries to be as productive as possible.

Michael is your classic emancipated male and he's not hung up on the gender power imbalance, but when he's denied access to the kitchen, he gets a little frustrated. He wants to make a substantial contribution, but Stella (Seema Biswas) has her own agenda.

A longtime cook to the Canadian diplomatic corps, Stella has seen couples like Michael and Maya pass through Delhi for decades while she lingers behind in the same dead-end position, completing the same dead-end tasks.

Stella and Michael have a few bad moments at the beginning, but when Michael asks Stella to be his cooking guru, and educate him about the secrets of Indian cuisine, Stella gets the ego strokes she craves and warms up to the new boss.

Yet, for all her apparent selflessness, Stella's got her own groove - and her own contraband dealership.

Without getting into the details of her scam, Stella turns out to be a little more troublesome than we first imagined - but neither Michael nor Maya suspect a thing.

They look at Stella with lingering guilt about the social inequities of everyday Indian life, and try very hard to be the open-minded social-justice heroes most Canadians imagine themselves to be.

This creates a good wrinkle in Mehta's rather smooth narrative silk, and gives an otherwise formulaic idea a lot of subtext to play with. Suddenly, this isn't just a caper comedy, or a foodie movie featuring beautiful people and exotic visuals.

Mehta finds a meditative corner to sit with the political and social meaning of masters and servants, and with McKellar and Biswas in the central roles, there's a palpable sense of mental fodder.

The resulting bolus is as colourful as it is ambitious, but by the time it's finally broken down and digested as the movie progresses, it loses a lot of its flavour.

Because Biswas, McKellar and Lisa Ray are standout talents with endless screen presence, Cooking With Stella is easy to watch and a cinch to digest. It's also guaranteed to make you hungry. But without a strong ending or a tight plot weave, you may walk away with a frustrating gurgle in the pit of your belly as you seek that little something extra that never quite hit the plate.