The best food content on (mostly) Netflix
Prolonged lockdowns have turned eating out into a thing of the past. Here's a shortlist of what's been sustaining me while I dream of congregating with my loved ones around copious family meals.
Food content is probably my favorite kind of content. I wish I could say that it’s political documentaries or feminist theory but hey, I’m only human. It’s what I watch when I eat, when I’m sad, when I’m confined with nowhere to go. Last weekend I watched Anthony Bourdain’s Parts Unknown (although not the best) episode in Chengdu to accentuate the Fish Fragrant Eggplant I was eating. What can I say, it just takes the experience to a whole other level. Like watching your favorite superhero movie in 3D.
Over the years, I've gone through my fair share of culinary productions, have relied heavily on foodie websites (hi Eater, I love you) to plan delicious trips to Asia and Europe or just to arrange a spectacular midweek dinner. I dabbled in food blogging back in 2016, which was fun though short-lived. During my 2018 sabbatical, mom and I started a home-based bakery, allowing me to dip a toe in entrepreneurship and event management, all while eating all manner of cake. In 2019, I co-founded a small digital marketing agency for which I started doing food photography for local eateries. That project yielded an unlikely fried chicken bouquet but also led to collaborations with businesses whose products I enjoy on the regular, namely Kristen’s Kickass Ice Cream and Coffee Nut Café. I’ve plotted to open my very own café, a ramen restaurant, a fried rice counter. All this to say that food is the ultimate love language.
Because many of us are confined and the joys of eating out, out of reach, I thought I’d share with you some of my most highly-rated food content. Because it’s everything I love: captivating visuals, fantastic looking dishes and, if we’re lucky, remarkable storytelling. The best of the best will usually transcend food and tell tales of cultures, immigration, family and sometimes even expose social, economic and racial disparities while they’re at it.
Midnight Diner: Tokyo Series (Netflix, seasons 1 & 2)
I go back to this show every few years because of its healing properties. It’s a soothing balm for my heart. Its initial run aired on Japanese network MBS from 2009-2014; its 2015 Netflix reboot has the same premise and much of the same cast but with better storytelling and a higher production quality. The eponymous Midnight Diner is open from 12 AM to 7 AM and has a roster of quirky regulars with a new character or two being introduced in most episodes. Although he only has one item on the menu, Master (pictured above) will make any dish his patrons request, provided he has the ingredients for it.
Every self-contained episode centers around a single dish (from tan men to octopus wieners and omurice) which usually has a strong emotional value for the character ordering it. Most of the narrative tension then revolves around the episode’s main character as they resolve an important conflict oftentimes related to their go-to dish. Food is indissociable from feelings and Midnight Diner personifies that. It might seem a little on the nose but I promise it’s full of magic and will break your heart. Very binge-worthy and totally lockdown-friendly too!
Tacos Chronicles (Netflix, Volumes 1 and 2)
Not a huge fan of the title but this is already a 2021 favorite. First pro: it’s set in Mexico (with a few quick stopovers in the US) and is almost entirely in Spanish! Watch this with me and I quickly become the most annoying viewing partner, stubbornly trying to decipher the dialogue owing to its proximity to French. Every 30-minute episode tells the story of one kind of taco, with the taco as narrator. Conchinita Pibil, Suadero, Al Pastor. You name it. Offbeat animations take us back in time, to their surprising origins: China, Lebanon, Turkey, different parts of Mexico. It really makes you question staunch advocacy for ‘tradition’ and ‘authenticity’. Cultures have always cross-pollinated through food and we’re better for it.
Sumptuous wide-panning shots pull us into spectacular Mexican landscapes, personal portraits of impassioned taqueros give the dishes their due and conversations with lively local eaters make the stories come alive. After a sweaty night of clubbing, during a lunch break, in the middle of a quick market run. Everyone wants a taco. And if tacos are a language then all taqueros are poets.
The last episode of volume 2, Pescado is an all-round banger, taking us all the way from the Mexican Pacific Coast to Tokyo to underscore an international proclivity for delicious, crispy fish encased in a soft envelope.
Worth It: Taiwan Series (Buzzfeed on YouTube)
If you’ve been on the internet at any point in recent history, you know about Worth It. Over the many seasons, we’ve discovered so many different foods at different price points. Mac ‘n’ cheese, burgers, breakfast sandwiches, Korean barbecue. The list goes on and on. Episodes have been hit and miss, but mostly hit. The recent, socially-distanced picnic was particularly wonderful and will be looked back on as peak 2020. That being said, the three-part miniseries in Taiwan has got to be the best in my book. There’s an entire episode dedicated to dumplings! They also chow down on the most mouth-watering food combo of Taiwanese fried chicken and sparkling wine. Urgh. The lush cityscape, the iconic dishes, the friendly banter between the show hosts and the restaurant owners… It’s a surefire way to activate any gourmet’s FOMO.
Ugly Delicious (Netflix, season 1)
Momofuku’s Dave Chang is charismatic, irreverent, hilarious. But that’s not even half of why this show is so great. Probably my favorite food show of all time because it gets everything right. Chang and long-time collaborator Pete Meehan tackle one food per episode - tacos, pizza, stuffed food, fried rice etc. - and take it apart. In most episodes, they’re accompanied by opinionated food people (critics, chefs, writers) and discover some of the best and most unusual iterations of the food items under scrutiny. They travel to the source (Mexico City for tacos, Napoli for pizza) to talk origin stories, sample top-tier contemporary versions (often in America) and sometimes visit far-flung places where the average viewer might not have expected to find a legitimate form of the dish (Tokyo for pizza, Copenhagen for tacos).
Additionally, the show doesn’t shy away from making social commentary when it has to. While discussing Mexican food, they broach the very real threat of deportation for undocumented immigrants, many of which are cooking outstanding fare across America, and food writer Gustavo Arellano matter-of-factly raises the appropriation question when the team behind world-class Noma opens a high-ticket pop-up in Tulum. In the fried chicken episode, Dave has a number of sensitive conversations with chefs (of color and white) about the racist history of chicken in America, to shed light on stultifying stereotypes and give credit where credit is due.
There’s a shorter, slightly less riveting season 2 to look forward to once you’ve quickly made your way through the first 8 episodes. Get watching!
Stewed Awakening
[…] divorcing history from food erases the contributions and lives of people of color from Western narratives. When whiteness is allowed to function as if it weren’t that, it hurts us all.
Navneet Alang
This one isn’t a series but an excellent piece of writing I came across in 2020. It explored food media through the lens of cultural appropriation and effectively contributed to the global conversations about whiteness that have come to the fore in the last year.
“Ethnic” foods and flavors are often co-opted by the west (especially western food media), given a twist and stripped of their history. We’ve seen it with “chai tea”, turmeric lattes and other Asian flavors finding their way into what Alang calls the “global pantry”. These foods erstwhile considered off-putting, are slapped with a western label - and often, a higher price tag - and suddenly become aspirational. To us, taste-making is white so we don’t tend to question anything. We sometimes even celebrate cultural theft because we think “if white people sanction it, our food must be good”. As if our own approval weren’t enough. As a Brown Canadian with lots of internalized racism to unpack, I’ve often fallen prey to these marketing stunts and participated in my own erasure.
Only whiteness can deracinate and subsume the world of culinary influences into itself and yet remain unnamed.
Navneet Alang
While Alang substantiates a lot of my well-founded Brown anger, his take is moderate, well-reasoned and well-researched. It’s a complex question with no easy answers. As third-culture children of the diaspora, there are many ways for us to disappear into whiteness and it isn’t always obvious. Talking to each other about our biases as well as our experiences with erasure and assimilation is a great place to start. There’s immense power in the collective.
Honorable mention
Everything Marion Grasby touches turns into edible gold. Catch her (and her adorable Mama Noi) in her Bangkok kitchen, serving up the best Asian dishes, with a focus on Thai cuisine. All crowd favorites are given multiple twists; noodles, dumplings, fried rice are cooked Chinese-style, Filipino-style, Japanese-style. I may not have followed any of her recipes end to end but a lot of her cooking tips have helped elevate my stir-fry game and for that my tastebuds say thank you!
I realize this listicle isn’t very diverse; it’s very Asian and also VERY male. Going forward, I hope to seek out more international food content produced by women and N.B.s of color. We’re tastemakers too! I’ll come back to this list and update it as I move along.
If you love food content too and have recommendations of your own, please share them in the comment section!
Yours truly and always hungry,
N
Wow, thank you so much for this piece! I also LOVE food content and I absolutely loved Ugly Delicious and Taco Chronicles. Have you watched the two seasons of Street Food? I also recently discovered the New York Cheap Eats series by the Fung Bros on Youtube - these guys are amazing! They often showcase local businesses in NY and beyond and also talk about political and social issues (cultural appropriation, the Stop Asian Hate campaign, etc.). And I highly recommend the Bouffons podcast for some content in French!
I will always be grateful to Nadia for doing a show for people who can't be bothered like me 😅