This blog post was due an hour ago, but I just can’t bring myself to stop watching Netflix’s extraordinary documentary series, Chef’s Table and get to writing. More than just another cooking show, Chef’s Table is an expansive peek into the mind and world of a modern master chef and the forces that influence their cooking. Luscious, fascinating and enticing, season one, profiling six chefs from five different countries, is also culturally relevant as we get to see the history, ecology, culture, family and experiences that each chef draws upon in creating their sensational cuisine. I loved all of them.
Besides the dishes, restaurants and process, each episode is extraordinary in how they not only profile a driven, creative chef, but in how that chef is so representative of their nation’s and region’s cultural norms. Chef Dan Barber of New York, is as intense and relentless as the great city itself. Chef Massimo Bottura of Modena, is as brilliant, charming and family oriented as ever an Italian was, and his culinary innovation was initially met with much hostility in a change resistant land. Chef Ben Shewry, originally from New Zealand, whose little restaurant in Melbourne has all the can-do spirit and lack of pretention as an Australian folk tale. Chef Magnus Nilsson of Sweden whose aloof and self-assured nature seems to be plucked from a course on working with Sweden. Chef Niki Nakayama, a Los Angeles based Japanese American who, like the city she lives in, broke with centuries of tradition and sexism to become a great female chef with the temerity to reinvent Japanese cuisine. And my personal favorite, the aging mad poet-chef of the bunch, Chef Francis Mallmann, who after mastering the French gastronomic world left it all behind to become a gypsy chef wandering the wilds of Patagonia and creating a cuisine that truly embodies the Argentine land and spirit.
The entire series is a delicious primer on creative genius, on the importance of doing things with love and passion and a desire for perfection, all while evoking a wonderful sense of place and the feeling that much of what makes these chefs and their food so wonderful is in how it so perfectly captures the essence of the culture they come from. Watch and let me know what you think.
