SINGAPORE — Consider yourselves warned: Do not attempt to watch Chef on an empty stomach. You’ll come out of the cinema with cravings so intense and immediate you’ll be shoving past pregnant women and little old ladies just to get your taste buds satiated.

Chef is Iron Man director Jon Favreau’s return to his indie roots. It’s essentially food porn for the modern hip foodie. It’s also cinema naturalism at its heck-care best, similar but not as affecting as his own Swingers back in 1996.

In this film, which he also wrote and directed, Favreau stars as worn down Chef Carl, who finds himself walking away from a cushy restaurant job to seek renewed inspiration and creative independence after a food critic’s comments hit a particularly painful nerve. And if, in the process, he reconnects with his neglected son, all the better.

If you really must, then yes, you can look much deeper into the psyche of Chef and perhaps discover a parallel to Favreau’s own career. Very much like the protagonist’s up and down culinary journey, Favreau first burst into the indie scene in the 1990s, gained fame for his refreshingly bold style and broke into the massive budget big leagues with 2008’s box office smash Iron Man. But after the critical thrashing of his other big studio films, Iron Man 2 and Cowboys & Aliens, Favreau now seems more comfortable (happy even) returning to a smaller, more personal way of making films.

What Favreau has always done well he does again in Chef — and that’s creating natural rapport among his actors. When he, Bobby Cannavale and John Leguizamo exchange jokes in the kitchen, we laugh along. When he interacts with Emjay Anthony (who plays the son) and Sofia Vergara (the ex-wife), we believe him.

There are also cameos from A-List friends like Dustin Hoffman, Scarlett Johansson and Robert Downey Jr, all of whom add a delightfully spicy touch to this slow building souffle of a journey.

But perhaps it really is a bit too long for its own good, even if the lingering shots of food preparation is much appreciated. The coda is also a tad too neatly wrapped up, but Chef is a likeable enough movie to rise above all its sour points.

Feel-good, unfussed, cheery, it’s cinematic comfort food. Nothing more, nothing less.

(NC16, 114 mins)