Top 10 Netflix Food Shows

"No, I wasn't in Spider-Man."

by Kumari Tilakawardane
Movies & TV Shows Article

14

Top 10 Netflix Food Shows

One of the biggest topics of discussion during lockdown has been food: how much to buy, where to buy it, who to buy it from, how to grow it and how to eat it. Now that the era of panic hoarding fusilli and toilet roll seems to be behind us, there’s still the very real proposition of cooking while quarantined. Even for those who were avid home cooks before lockdown descended, not having access to beloved restaurants, regular trips to pick up forgotten essentials or even a ‘cheeky’ takeaway is likely to be tough during this most stressful of times.

With cooking every meal comes cleaning up after every meal – so why not those put dishes off just a couple of hours longer? You can even call it homework for your next foray into the kitchen with any of these delectable dishes streaming near you. 

10. Million Pound Menu

Part Dragons’ Den, part Masterchef: The Professionals, each episode of Million Pound Menu features prospective up-and-comers from the food world. An intimidating group of restauranteurs and gourmands debate the merits of the contestants’ offerings, and two are given the opportunity to cook for their potential investors and future customers in their own pop-up space. It’s an interesting watch for those interested in the restaurant industry, and offers an insight into how food trends are made and broken. There’s not really much drama or antagonism going on, and you won’t find any shouty arguments or tear-filled meltdowns that go on in similar shows, but it’s really compelling and promises to lead you down a hole of menu Googling that might even inspire your own dinner.

9. Somebody Feed Phil

If you love Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives (Triple D, to those in the know), try a sample of Somebody Feed Phil, which offers a similar ingredient list – a tour of some culinary hidden gems, travel to amazing places, and a host bursting at the seams with charisma. In this case, the host is Phil Rosenthal, the creator of Everybody Loves Raymond among other things, and the travel goes beyond the United States all around the world. There are currently two seasons on Netflix, with a third due to drop at the end of May, so it’s the perfect time to tuck in to Phil’s world and travel the menus of the world from your sofa. I particularly recommend the New Orleans, Saigon, New York City and Buenos Aires episodes.

8. Taco Chronicles

Who doesn’t love a taco? This beautiful Spanish-language series dedicates an episode to six different kinds of tacos, exploring all the nooks and crannies of foodie history. From the story of each recipe’s creation through to how it’s been interpreted and how it’s made today, each episode is like a love story to the taco. There’s plenty of those classic close ups of food, slow motion ingredient shots and wonderfully-lit kitchen scenes – this one will make you hungry, so I wouldn’t watch it too far in advance of your tea.

7. Cooked

Helmed by acclaimed journalist and author Michel Pollan, Cooked delves into the science and alchemy behind cooking. Examine how the elements of fire, air, water and earth affect ingredients and form your favourite dishes with Pollan, who tries his hand at everything from baking to beer brewing. This is one for the serious foodie (or even science buff) who wants to take a closer look at how our grub is made. It’s also a great way to get a better understanding of different food cultures around the world and the way common cooking techniques have evolved over time. You might even pick up a few tips to try yourself – if you can find the time…

6. Rotten

Coming off the back of our recent nationwide brush with mass food waste (seriously, millions of pounds worth of produce was tossed during the first few weeks of lockdown), Rotten is a timely and important watch. The docu-series explores the food production industry, and interviews key players – like farmers, doctors, scientists – behind what and how we eat. It’s not an easy watch and isn’t as fun and whimsical as some others on this list, but it’s still hugely interesting and very topical. Lots of the stories investigated are from headline-grabbing news stories, and it’s genuinely affecting to see what happens to the real people behind your burger. It’s not particularly flattering for a lot of people – cough, big corporations, cough – but it’s a real eye-opener. The chicken episode is a particularly compelling watch, almost veering into true crime territory.

5. The Chef's Line

One of Australia’s best exports – besides wine, Neighbours and Cate Blanchett – is cooking shows. Aussie Masterchef is one of the best, and there’s something incredibly addictive about the wacky weirdness of My Kitchen Rules. Enter The Chef’s Line, in which passionate home cooks are tasked with serving up their favourite dish to an expert. Episodes come in at under half an hour, so you can easily binge away an afternoon getting involved in each mini-season (the series is broken up into sections focused on a specific cuisine). It’s a nice break to watch a cooking competition show where the contestants aren’t frequently bamboozled, flustered and just plain frazzled, being pushed into the unknown to make some obscure dessert they’ve never heard of. In The Chef’s Line, the contestants are well versed, knowledgeable and passionate about the dishes they make, plus hosts who are not only experts in cooking but who are happy to frequently impart tips and tricks of the trade.

4. Chef's Table

Couldn’t really write this list without including Chef’s Table, a show now spanning six ‘volumes’ and pretty much the whole globe. The famous show (it was nominated for an Emmy!) chronicles the tales of the culinary world’s brightest stars, from producers to chefs. Whether you choose to indulge on the whole thing or compose a tasting menu of episodes based on your palate, watching this show is a real joy for people serious about eating and those keen on knock-out visuals. While most of the early episodes are very much about haute cuisine, as the series has gone on it’s become more accessible and a bit more familiar, all the while remaining mouth-wateringly appealing. It’s not all fluffy celebrity chefs or snobby gourmets on here, either. This really is ground-breaking television, perhaps best exemplified by the jaw-dropping Volume 5 episode about Cristina Martinez – just one of the truly unmissable episodes.

3. Street Food

Basically the accessible, down-to-earth and completely lovable spin-off of Chef’s Table, Street Food is an up close and extremely personal look at some of Asia’s most famous street foods and the people who make them. Like Chef’s Table, it’s visually stunning, comprising slow motion shots of woks being tossed, veggies being chopped and oil glistening as it heats. Each half-hour episode is about one chef, one food, one cuisine, one country. It’s a no-nonsense format that mirrors each of the people it spotlights, and makes digesting each theme easy as pie. The show goes beyond the stalls and trucks to highlight the (often difficult) lives of the people who craft the dishes on display, and is much the richer for it. It shows the harsh reality (and burnt fingers and impossibly early mornings) that go into ‘making it’ at any level in food, without any preening or pumped-up prestige. It’s blisteringly exciting and properly gorgeous food TV. You can’t travel to Asia on holiday right now, but you can almost kid yourself that you’re there with an episode of this.

2. Salt Fat Acid Heat

Come for the in-depth exploration of all things food, stay for the infectious smile and unerring optimism of the host. This show (and the book it was based on) launched chef Samin Nosrat into food fame, and for good reason. As the title suggests, Salt Fat Acid Heat focuses on these four key tenets of cooking, travelling the world to see how they’re applied. It’s easily bingeable and effortlessly comforting, with Nosrat’s not-at-all-veiled enthusiasm the perfect antidote to the doom and gloom that permeates our 24-hour news cycle these days. You’ll find your cooking game steps up a gear or two after watching this four-episode series, which is filled with tips and tricks for getting the best out of your ingredients as well as lively interviews and close-ups of food that will get your stomach rumbling.

1. The Chef Show

Sort of based on Jon Favreau’s movie Chef, this show is the ultimate TV version of comfort eating. Favreau is joined by chef Roy Choi as they cook, eat and talk with celebrities and chefs all around the world. Part talk-show, part bromance, part cooking demonstration and part documentary, The Chef Show is incredibly watchable and is like a comforting hug (or a big bowl of proverbial soup or a bottomless cup of tea) for your soul. Favreau and Choi are the perfect double act, and are joined by lots of familiar faces across the series. There’s travel, famous food, useful cooking tips and plenty of laughs – it’s a great choice for households with a combination of casual eaters and serious foodies. You’ll find yourself watching it like a sitcom, rather than an instructional food programme. It’s truly become one of my favourite shows and never fails to raise a smile.

Are there any vital ingredients missing here? Let us know in the discussion thread what your favourite food shows are?


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