Remy is a rat who lives in the attic of a French country home with his brother Emile and a rat pack led by his father Django. Gifted with a strong sense of smell and taste, Remy aspires to be a gourmet chef, inspired by France’s recently deceased top chef, Auguste Gusteau. Instead, however, his talent is put to work in sniffing for rat poison. When the pack is discovered by the home’s occupant, they flee into the sewers; Remy becomes separated from the others and ends up marooned underneath Gusteau’s restaurant in Paris, conversing with a hallucination of the famous chef. Urged on by Gusteau, Remy makes his way up to the restaurant’s kitchen skylight to watch the staff in action. There, he observes Alfredo Linguini being hired as an escuelerie by Skinner, the restaurant’s current owner, and Gusteau’s former sous-chef. When Linguini spills some of the soup and attempts to recreate it using random ingredients, Remy is horrified, and falls into the kitchen; there, instead of escaping, he fixes the soup. Remy is caught by Linguini just as Linguini is caught by Skinner, but before anyone can stop the serving staff, the soup is served and Skinner notices a woman tasting the soup. She then calls the waiter and fires him but the woman asks her to see him. She turns out to be a food critic and that she likes the soup. Colette, the staff’s only female chef, convinces Skinner to retain Linguini, believing him to be the success behind the soup. Linguini takes Remy home instead of killing him, as Remy was the “little chef” who made the soup. After a lot of training, Remy and Linguini overcome their language barrier, with Remy pulling Linguini’s hair under his toque Blanche to control his limbs like a marionette. The pair successfully meets the challenges devised by Skinner and is able to serve his first ever dish. Skinner, suspicious of Linguini’s talents, discovers that Linguini is actually Gusteau’s son and, by Gusteau’s will, is the rightful owner of the restaurant; this revelation would ruin Skinner’s plans to use Gusteau’s name to market a line of microwaveable meals and fire him in the process. Remy discovers the documents and takes them to Linguini, who subsequently fires Skinner and takes control of the restaurant. Linguini and Colette begin to develop a romantic bond, leaving Remy feeling left out and taken for granted. Remy finds Emile in the restaurant’s trash, and Remy is reunited with the pack. Django warns Remy that humans and rats will never get along, but Remy does not believe him. Meanwhile, Remy begrudgingly feeds Emile and his friends by stealing from the kitchen’s pantry as the nights pass.
