Designed as a superior piece of counter-programming in a multiplex season dominated by loud and expensive threequels, No Reservations has all the right ingredients for a succulent cinematic dish aimed to please viewers looking down on all those burger menus of returning comic book favourites and aging action heroes. With a director of high-brow Hollywood fare in the form of Scott Hicks (Shine, Snow Falling on Cedars, Hearts in Atlantis), a sure-bet cast centred around Catherine Zeta-Jones and Aaron Eckhart, and the winning formula of a much-liked 2001 German film named Mostly Martly, No Reservations promises a refreshing helping of refinement, but delivers a rather slight exercise on a routine and leaves you guessing whether this all was worth your while. There is nothing wrong with the film, apart from the fact that it assembles superior talent only to give them material that would seem perfectly appropriate on some family-oriented TV channel, but which is ostensibly trivial on the big screen.

Zeta-Jones is Kate, the star-chef of an always-full Manhattan restaurant who maitains army-like discipline in the kitchen and is always ready to lock horns with any of those nasty customers who challenge the chef’s culinary judgment only to impress their dates. This has the restaurant owner Paula (the wonderful Patricia Clarkson) pulling her hair in despair as she subscribes to the “client is always right” philosophy. Losing her star in the kitchen, however, is out of the question and Paula demands that Kate see a shrink (Bob Balaban) who would help her hone her people skills – yet most of their time together is spent discussing recipes and sampling news dishes.

Kate’s perfectionism is bordering on obsession as she selects fresh fish at four in the morning and views any sort of private life and even going home as an irritating distraction. A tragedy throws her life out of balance – her sister dies in a car crash and Kate has to take care of her niece Zoe (Abigail Breslin), a task for which she is exceedingly ill equipped. To make matters worse, as Kate returns to the kitchen after a week-long hiatus, she finds a temp-replacement chef named Nick (Aaron Eckhart) playing Puccini’s Tosca to the staff and generally allowing them to have a good time. Kate is outraged; she thinks the guys is after her job, but it soon turns out Nick is only after her heart. He is what in Hollywood is probably viewed as flamboyant and utterly charming – the goofy clothes, the exceeding enthusiasm for opera, etc – but he is also clever enough to know that the route to Kate’s heart is though her palate and stomach and through bonding with little Zoe – something with which Kate clearly struggles. Soon enough, the kid chooses his pasta over her elaborate dishes and starts playing matchmaker.

There is nothing wrong with any of that, yet the ensuing romance is noticeably a by-the-numbers affair, as are the obligatory complications in Kate’s relationships with both Zoe and Nick, which need to be resolved before the film can end on an and-they-cooked-happily-ever-after note. Both Zeta-Jones and Eckhart seem to sense the inadequacies of the script and for all their talent and charm, their chemistry is rather strained – they both show more enthusiasm for the cooking than for the romance. The latter is not a world beater and somewhat renounces the initiative to the egg beaters. The film is by no means a disappointment: it does all it can with the ingredients at hands, it is only that there are precious little of them.