In the 25 years since Stanley Tucci’s “Big Night” was released in 1996, there has been, in America, a great upsurge of movies and television shows revolving around the world of restaurants, chefs, and fine dining. Tucci’s film, which he co-wrote with Joseph Tropiano and co-directed with Campbell Scott (who also appears in the film as a somewhat odd car salesman), about the final days of a struggling Italian restaurant in 1950s New Jersey, run by two immigrant brothers—businessman Secondo (Tucci) and brilliant chef Primo (Tony Shalhoub)—was certainly not the first such film. Outside of America, there had already been, just in the decade or so before, Juzo Itami’s “Tampopo,” Alfonso Arau’s “Like Water for Chocolate,” and Ang Lee’s “Eat Drink Man Woman” (and depending on whether or not you wished to count such a thing, Peter Greenaway’s “The Cook, the Thief, His Wife, and & Her Lover”)—but it certainly seems to have opened the floodgates. Since then, there has been no shortage of film and TV shows that deal not just with cooking, but the life struggles of those who cook at a high level, including films like cooking-as-a-metaphor-for-Jon-Favreau’s-film-career “Chef,” but also reality competitions like “Hell’s Kitchen” and “Top Chef.” The common thread in a lot of these post-“Big Night” products is how difficult it is to succeed, not just as a chef, but as a professional, as a person. “Chef” was seemingly born out of Favreau’s foundering creative spark after his unlikely move from independent cinema to the world of studio blockbusters. “Top Chef” is at least as much about who goes home, and when, and for what reason, as it is about who finally wins the season.