Buddha Jumps Over the Wall

Buddha Jumps Over the Wall

Pedro Peira

N/A

2025 / Spain / 83mins

Capitol 6 / 9-Feb / 5:30PM

The title of Buddha Jumps Over the Wall refers to a Chinese traditional story according to which the emperor’s cook made a dish so deliciously fragrant that a nearby monk leapt over a wall to try to taste it. In Pedro Peira’s documentary, it refers to jumping over culinary walls, particularly between the Basque country cuisine of chef David Yárnoz of the Michelin-ranked restaurant, El Molino de Urdániz, in Navarre, Spain, and the cuisine of Taipei, where Yárnoz opened a second restaurant in 2019. The documentary begins with Yárnoz’s return to Taipei for the first time in three years following the COVID pandemic. After ensuring the Taipei restaurant is maintaining its quality standards, Yárnoz goes on a tour of the local culinary scene, meeting local masters including French-trained Yu-chung Li, who became Taiwan’s first woman chef to achieve a prestigious Michelin ranking, and Chef Kai Ho, founder of the country’s first three-star Michelin restaurant, Taïroir (a portmanteau of Taiwan and terroir). An easy-going foodie hangout film, Buddha Jumps Over the Wall does a lot of jumping about, visiting restaurants and vineyards, farms and open-air night markets. Buddha brings to mind a favourite Basque culinary tradition: pintxo bar hopping, in which food enthusiasts go from establishment to establishment, sampling a variety of tasty bite-sized mini-snacks called pintxos (literally “spikes”) with combinations of food stacked on a piece of bread and held together with a toothpick. When Chef Kai comes to visit Navarre, Chef Ho sits at the bar counter with a glass of beer, demolishes a pintxo in a single bite, smiles and asks his friend, Yárnoz, “How do you say ‘yummy?’ -LL