Gourmet Detective Movies in Order: All 5 Hallmark Films + the 8 Books

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Henry Ross would much rather talk about truffles than testify in court, which is exactly why San Francisco homicide detective Maggie Price keeps finding him at her crime scenes. The Gourmet Detective movies are one of Hallmark’s shortest mystery runs — five films between 2015 and 2020 — and because the titles were borrowed from a book series and then shuffled, the order confuses people far more than it should.

Below is every Gourmet Detective movie in order with a spoiler-free setup, the eight Peter King novels the films took their names from, and an honest answer about whether a sixth movie is coming. For more adaptations like this, see our guide to Hallmark mystery movies based on books.

Gourmet Detective Movies in Order

All five premiered on Hallmark Movies & Mysteries, now Hallmark Mystery.

1. Gourmet Detective (May 16, 2015). Sabotage at a five-star restaurant owned by one of Henry’s friends turns into murder, and Henry talks his way into the case over the objections of the detective assigned to it. Start here: it sets up the partnership, the bickering and the kitchen shop-talk the whole series runs on.
2. Gourmet Detective: A Healthy Place to Die (August 2, 2015). Henry is a guest presenter at a gourmet food conference at a luxury resort, and Maggie is there on a rare vacation. A journalist goes missing and is found murdered, and the suspect list runs from a movie star to several big names in the San Francisco restaurant world.
3. Death al Dente: A Gourmet Detective Mystery (October 9, 2016). A well-known local chef, and a friend of Henry’s, is found dead in his own kitchen, and the trail leads back to an old family secret. This is where the slow-burn romance finally gets some friction, thanks to a stalker subplot and an ex of Maggie’s.
4. Gourmet Detective: Eat, Drink and Be Buried (October 8, 2017). A publisher’s birthday party features a reenacted 18th-century duel, and the antique pistol turns out to be loaded with a real musket ball. The victim is shot in front of a garden full of witnesses, which makes this the trickiest puzzle of the five. Bruce Boxleitner joins the cast as Henry’s father.
5. Roux the Day: A Gourmet Detective Mystery (January 19, 2020). A treasured handwritten recipe book sits at the center of a murder, and everyone who has owned it seems to have come to a bad end. The most bookish entry in the series and, so far, the last one.

A note on titles: Hallmark has listed these films under several naming patterns — Gourmet Detective Mysteries: Death al Dente, Death al Dente: A Gourmet Detective Mystery, and so on — which is why online lists of the series look inconsistent. The films themselves are the same five. As of October 2026 we have not seen an announcement of a sixth.

The Gourmet Detective Books by Peter King

The novels came first, and they are a different animal. Peter King was an English-born writer who worked as a chef before turning the food trade into fiction, and his narrator is never named: he is a former chef turned food-industry consultant who tracks down rare ingredients, finds substitutes for impossible ones and authenticates historical menus. He insists, in book after book, that he is not really a detective. There are eight novels, each one built around a different food capital.

1. The Gourmet Detective (1996). London. Our narrator is hired to find out who is sabotaging a restaurateur’s kitchen, and then a television journalist is poisoned at a banquet and Scotland Yard’s food squad would like a word. Some listings date this book 1994; the St. Martin’s Press edition was reviewed in spring 1996.
2. Spiced to Death (1997). New York. A shipment of Ko Feng, a spice thought to have been extinct for centuries, disappears from the harbor, the man who hired him is killed, and the case opens onto a black market in rare gourmet goods.
3. Dying on the Vine (1998). Provence. A neighbor keeps making absurdly generous offers for a small vineyard, the investigator hired to find out why has vanished, and the first body is written off as the work of a wild boar.
4. Death al Dente (1999). Bologna. Sent to Italy to decide which of three celebrated chefs should run a new London restaurant, he gets as far as a mozzarella factory before one of the candidates is killed.
5. A Healthy Place to Die (2000). The Swiss Alps. Standing in for a colleague at a spa, he is meant to demonstrate exotic cooking. Instead, two women who arranged to meet him disappear, and a mud bath very nearly finishes him off.
6. Eat, Drink, and Be Buried (2001). An English castle. He is hired to cook medieval banquets for paying guests at Harlington Castle, jousting and pageantry included, and becomes a private detective when a poisoning interrupts the program.
7. Roux the Day (2002). New Orleans. Asked to authenticate a family’s prized cookbook, he promptly loses the book and finds a dead man sitting in a bookshop owner’s chair. Five women who call themselves the Witches want the book too.
8. Dine and Die on the Danube Express (2003). A luxury train. On board to assess the service for a client, he is pressed into service himself when a famous Hungarian actress vanishes during the 25th-anniversary run. The last book in the series.

Movies vs. Books: What Changed

Quite a lot. Four of the five film titles come straight off book covers — A Healthy Place to Die, Death al Dente, Eat, Drink and Be Buried and Roux the Day — but not in the books’ order, and the plots behind them are new. In the novels the hero is nameless, lives in London and travels somewhere different every time; there is no Detective Maggie Price at all. The movies give him a name, Henry Ross, a permanent home in San Francisco, a police partner who starts out wanting nothing to do with him, and a will-they-won’t-they romance the books never attempt. Read the books for the travel and the food expertise; watch the films for the banter.

Who’s Who in the Movies

Dylan Neal plays Henry Ross, and he is more than the star: Neal co-wrote and executive produced the films with his wife, Becky Southwell, through their company Southwell Neal Entertainment, which is unusual for a Hallmark mystery series and shows in how consistent the tone stays. Brooke Burns plays Detective Maggie Price. Around them, Matthew Kevin Anderson is Munro, Samantha Ferris is Captain Forsyth, Ali Skovbye is Maggie’s daughter Abigail and Christine Willes is her mother Doris, Shannon Chan-Kent is Henry’s assistant Lucy, and Bruce Boxleitner turns up as Henry’s father, Jim.

Will There Be a Sixth Gourmet Detective Movie?

Most likely not. In June 2025, Dylan Neal said in an Instagram post that he did not believe there would be any more Gourmet Detective films and that he had nothing else in the pipeline at Hallmark. Nothing has been announced since, so the series stands at five movies, with a five-year gap already between the fourth and the fifth. If that changes we will update this page — but for now, treat Roux the Day as the finale.

Where to Watch the Gourmet Detective Movies

The films air on Hallmark Channel and Hallmark Mystery and stream on Hallmark+, and there is also a five-film DVD collection, which is the only way to be certain you can watch all of them in one sitting. Streaming rights to older Hallmark mysteries come and go, so check what your provider currently carries before you plan a marathon.

A Cozy Viewing Plan

Five movies is a comfortable weekend rather than a project. Watch the two 2015 films back to back on a Friday evening, the way they first arrived in the same summer, and you will have the whole Henry-and-Maggie dynamic in a single sitting. Save Death al Dente and Eat, Drink and Be Buried for Saturday, when the romance starts to matter and the puzzles get better. Then finish with Roux the Day on Sunday, ideally with something slow-cooked in the oven. A pot of tea works just as well as a glass of wine, and if the food talk leaves you hungry, our list of cozy mysteries with recipes included will keep the theme going.

FAQ

How many Gourmet Detective movies are there?
Five, released between May 2015 and January 2020, ending with Roux the Day.

Do I need to watch them in order?
Each film is a complete mystery, so you can dip in anywhere. Release order is still the better choice, because Henry and Maggie’s relationship and her family life develop steadily across the five.

Are the movies faithful to Peter King’s books?
No. They borrow four titles and the central idea of a food expert who keeps stumbling into murder. The nameless London narrator becomes Henry Ross of San Francisco, Detective Maggie Price is invented for the screen, and the plots are original.

Which Gourmet Detective book should I read first?
The Gourmet Detective, the 1996 original, introduces the narrator and his odd profession. If you would rather start with the title you recognize from the films, Roux the Day reads perfectly well on its own.

What should I watch next?
Try our guides to Aurora Teagarden movies in order, Garage Sale Mysteries in order and Hannah Swensen movies in order. All three started as books, too.

Did you stick with the Gourmet Detective to the end, and would you watch a sixth? Come tell us on The Teacup Sleuth on Facebook ☕🔍

Sources

Film titles, premiere dates and credited source novels on this page follow Wikipedia’s Gourmet Detective film table and Hallmark Channel’s own film pages. Where no source novel is credited we say so rather than guess from a matching title. If anything here is out of date, tell us in the comments and we will fix it.

Keep reading: Hallmark mystery movies based on books · cozy mysteries with recipes included · every cozy series in order (full index)