Jon Favreau's "Chef" was getting positive hype before winning an award for excellence (along with the documentary "Keep on Keepin' On") at the Tribeca Film Festival this weekend. With its worldwide release scheduled for May 9, the cooking comedy should be a huge draw at the box office (especially because there haven't been too many good movies out lately).

"Chef" comes at the right time. Cooking shows such as "Hell's Kitchen," "Kitchen Nightmares," and whatever happens to be on the Food Network are popular and have been for some time. Yet, there hasn't been a movie that's captured the trend played out regularly on TV. A few have touched on the subject, like "Waiting," "Five Year Engagement," 'No Reservations," and the many more that haven't popped into my head in the last few minutes. Never, however, has there been a movie so directly stating its purpose, "Chef."

The movie also has a strong social-media component. After the protagonist (Favreau, the title character) receives bad reviews from a food critic, he retaliates via Twitter and later has a meltdown encapsulated on YouTube. Eventually, he reinvents himself by purchasing a food truck and driving it around the country (sort of similar to Jason Segel's transformation in "Five Year Engagement").

"I wanted to tell a story that also captured where we are in time and the language we use," Favreau told Mashable during the New York premiere this week. "In Swingers, we used answering machines to convey that - with Chef, it made sense for [the chef's young son] to be a social media rock star and the audience gets that."

Honing in on the movie's social media component, Mashable praised "Chef" for broaching the topic in appropriate ways. The website also seemed to agree with the movie's surprisingly fresh topic.

"It's no surprise Chef won over audiences this week," Mashable writer Samantha Murphy Kelly wrote. "Not only is a fun take on a non-exhausted topic, it's sweet, funny and you'll miss the characters when it ends."