Flynn McGarry in Chef Flynn (Kino Lorber)

Running a professional kitchen is not a simple undertaking. Throw in premium ingredients and an experimental menu, and it’s even tougher. Now set the restaurant in competitive Los Angeles with the rest of the world watching. Intimidating, no? But that’s exactly what chef Flynn McGarry set out to do. Successfully. At the age of 11.

The unique and engaging documentary Chef Flynn chronicles McGarry’s rise from playing with plastic dishes as a toddler to the opening of his high-profile restaurant in New York, Gem. Though the film is directed by Cameron Yates, the production echoes the planning and execution of Flynn’s mother, Meg McGarry, a filmmaker herself. “There were some scarring and strange things that my mom made,” Flynn explains. “And my dad is a photographer. There was always film equipment. They were always filming things we did. Everything was being documented in one way or another.”

A lot of Meg’s footage of Flynn cooking has made it into the film. Toward the beginning, we see Flynn constantly shooing his mom out of his space, crying, “Turn it off!” and “Why are you filming this?” We also see shots of Meg’s promotional materials—glamorous Hollywood-style headshots, business cards, and the like—all printed with her stage name, Meg Daniels.

Meg noticed and encouraged Flynn’s obsession with culinary arts when he was still ridiculously young. It became apparent early on that young McGarry wasn’t wired the way everyone else was. Fitting in at school—or even caring about school at all—was a challenge for him. Meg pulled him out and homeschooled him, and Flynn used the extra time to educate himself as he saw fit.

To facilitate his development, Flynn’s parents rigged a full-sized kitchen for him to experiment with in his childhood bedroom—replete with a vacuum sealer, induction burners, and an immersion circulator. It’s surreal watching a nine- or 10-year-old Flynn look straight into Meg’s camera and say, “And there you have your sous vide short ribs with shitake mushroom polenta and a blackberry red wine reduction sauce—my signature dish.”

As the viewer watches Flynn mature and start to make connections, it’s easy to feel cynical. The kid’s clearly a savant and gifted and has inexhaustible support from nearly everyone in his life. He begins to take on internships and the stage at restaurants like Chicago’s Alinea and New York’s Eleven Madison Park and lands features in the New York Times and The New Yorker.

That’s when filmmaker Yates allows the cracks to show.

Will, Flynn’s father, is a recovering alcoholic, and Meg insightfully shares her thoughts on that, explaining that she’s encountered many young chefs whose fathers are addicts or struggle with mood disorders. She suggests that controlling a large kitchen is an attractive prospect for Flynn and his peers because it makes them feel that they have control over their lives.

And while his family is excited about Flynn’s success, certainly not everyone is. In fact, for a benign, geeky, 19-year-old starting a creative venture in New York for the pure love of it, Flynn has made some enemies mighty fast. More mature chefs have complained about McGarry’s bypassing that period in a culinary career where you get abused and overworked in the kitchen. Notably, Chef David Santos has said of him, “I shit this morning more knowledge and life on the line than a 16-year-old has.”

This film is a must-watch for foodies and entrepreneurs, and viewers outside these parameters may find the Flynn-and-Meg dynamic just as compelling as Flynn’s professional development. Editor Hannah Buck blends old footage and new, and the inclusion of audio from interview sessions with mother and son makes for a very intimate piece of work.