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Food for Filming

Fuel Cafe

If you haven’t seen the TV show Sun Records yet, you need to watch it!

Not only is the show great, but it’s fun to recognize the spots in our hometown where they filmed the show. 

There is a lot of behind the scenes work that goes into the production of a film or TV series … including feeding the cast and crew.

Erik Proveaux, owner and chef of Fuel Café and Food Truck, and his team were the official caterers for Sun Records when they filmed here in Memphis last year.

Erik wasn’t just cooking for that million dollar quartet … he was cooking for a lot more!

“It was a fairly long shoot. It was 70 shoot days – and that’s breakfast and lunch. And we cooked from anywhere from 120 people to 350 people depending on how many extras they had.”

That’s a lot of meals!

Each day Erik and his team would have a buffet spread for the cast and crew to enjoy. So that’s multiple dishes per meal. More than can be done from his Fuel food truck.

“So to cook for this kind of amount of people, I usually bring in other equipment. And I’ll have another truck and set up tents and stuff like so that we can set up field kitchens so that we can cook for any number of people that way.”

If you think you want to get into film catering, you need to be a morning person!

“One of the less glamorous parts about doing this sort of catering is just the hours we have to work. If we have to be ready at 5 a.m., we’d have to meet up at the restaurant at like 1:30 in the morning.”

This is Jennifer Chandler with The Weekly Dish. Bon Appetit!

Jennifer Chandler graduated at the top of her class from Le Cordon Bleu in Paris. She is a full-time mom to two daughters in Memphis, Tennessee, and is a freelance food writer, restaurant consultant, and author of four cookbooks The Southern Pantry Cookbook, Simply Salads, Simply Suppers, and Simply Grilling.