Madagascar, 1975. A French chef named Jean Delaunay is flown to the capital in a military jet. His mission: cook dinner for Didier Ratsiraka, the island's new Marxist strongman. Delaunay thought he was just doing a job. He didn't know he was about to become part of an unspoken network — the culinary support system for some of history's worst monsters.
That's the premise of How to Feed a Dictator, a new documentary that landed on Hacker News this week with a flurry of debate. The film tracks five chefs who cooked for men like Idi Amin, Pol Pot, and Saddam Hussein. Their stories are stomach-churning — not because of the food, but because of what they were willing to ignore.
The Chauffeur and the Chopped Liver
The documentary opens with a scene that's almost comic: a chef in Idi Amin's kitchen, chopping liver while machine guns rattle outside. "You don't ask questions," the chef says. "You just make the pâté."
That's the moral rot at the film's core. These chefs weren't forced. They were paid. Handsomely. One cooked for Pol Pot while the Khmer Rouge starved millions. Another whipped up soufflés for Saddam as his chemical weapons killed thousands. The film asks: at what point does serving a dictator's lunch become a war crime?
"You don't ask questions. You just make the pâté."
The Hacker News crowd, predictably, argued about the ethics of "just following orders." But the film's real punch comes from the details. The chef who worked for Mobutu in Zaire described a fridge full of caviar while the capital had no running water. The man who fed Ceaușescu admitted to tasting every dish for poison — but never once thought about the poison of his boss's policies.
The Recipe for Complicity
One chef, a Frenchman named Pierre, is the film's most unsettling figure. He worked for François "Papa Doc" Duvalier in Haiti, then for his son Jean-Claude "Baby Doc." Pierre describes the Duvaliers' taste for French classics — foie gras, truffles, roasted duck. When asked about the Tonton Macoute death squads, he shrugs: "That was politics. I was cooking."
The film's director, Sarah Kessler, doesn't let him off the hook. She intercuts his interview with footage of mass graves. The contrast is brutal. But Pierre's defense — "I just made dinner" — is exactly the point. The documentary argues that these chefs represent a deeper human failure: the ability to compartmentalize evil until it's just a job.
Some have criticized the film as "chef-shaming." The Hacker News thread was split. One user wrote: "If you refuse to cook for a dictator, you're dead. If you do, you're complicit. There's no winning." Another countered: "Pol Pot's chef could have laced the soup with rat poison. Instead, he made consommé."
What Would You Do?
The film's most powerful moment comes when a chef named Viktor — who worked for Idi Amin's rival, Milton Obote — breaks down. "I thought I was helping my country," he says. "I was just helping a monster." Viktor eventually fled Uganda, leaving behind his pots and his conscience.
Kessler doesn't offer easy answers. She lets the chefs hang themselves with their own words. One boasts about inventing a dessert for Saddam. Another still keeps a photo of himself with Amin. They're proud of the work, even now. That's the horror.
"I thought I was helping my country. I was just helping a monster."
The Guardian's review called it "a stomach-churning look at the banality of evil." The Hacker News crowd debated whether the film was "just another Western guilt trip" or a necessary mirror. But the comment that stuck with me came from a user named @SkepticalChef: "I've worked in private kitchens. You see things. You say nothing. This film isn't about dictators. It's about us."
The Last Bite
How to Feed a Dictator ends with a shot of an empty dining room. A table set for one. The camera lingers on a single plate — clean, white, waiting. Then the screen goes black.
It's a stark reminder: the tyrant ate. The chef served. And the rest of us, we just watched.
Maybe that's the point. We're all, in some small way, feeding the monsters. The question is whether we know what's on the menu.
