This zebra has nothing to do with Netflix. When you take thousands of photos a year, and you publish significantly fewer than you take, you are bound to stumble across one here and there and think “Hey! I bet the internet would like to see a little wire statue of a zebra today!” So here one is! (The piece is from a show a few years back at Nahcotta, and I have no idea who the artist was. If anyone knows, I’ll update this!)
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When Netflix dropped a massive amount of titles a year or so ago with no fair warning, I was ready to break up with it had it not been a good source of guilty pleasure series and my favorite British crime dramas. Fortunately, the service has started to redeem itself for me lately – specifically with their additions of some new food related content. Last night we watched Sally Rowe’s documentary ‘A Matter of Taste’, following the career of the chef Paul Liebrandt. The film was both fascinating and depressing. Liebrandt, who achieved some notoriety in his very early 20’s (for good reason) and whose career started going downhill from there doesn’t seem to catch any breaks, and most of the film caused me significant pain like I was watching some sort of accident in slow-mo. It’s weird to think of what it takes to make a documentary that spans nearly a decade (or sometimes more in filming). What is that special something that the film maker sees that the rest of the world doesn’t know? How many crappy films are made over a decade where the protagonist just never does anything interesting?
We’ve just started with David Chang’s ‘The Mind of a Chef’, the PBS series where Chang goes around and eats stuff, meets chefs all over the world, talks science, and comes up with crazy shit, and it’s proving to be just as entertaining as I expected it to be. I think it was the first or second episode where he made gnocchi out of ramen noodles (the dried package kind), and I was hooked for life.
Here’s a few from my Netflix queue – mostly documentaries, and a few fictitious in the mix. I’ve linked to the Netflix instant viewing for your convenience:
Three Stars – “Focusing on nine Michelin-starred chefs from three continents, filmmaker Lutz Hachmeister reveals the real business of cooking on the highest level.”
The Raw and The Cooked – “This sumptuous doc explores Taiwan’s diverse culinary culture, drawn from both ethnic Chinese and myriad outside influences.”
Eat This New York – “The difficulties of two restaurant owners are highlighted by interviews with some of New York City’s most successful and famous restaurateurs.”
Haute Cuisine – “Based on real characters and lives, this food-rich drama recounts Hortense Laborie’s experiences as personal chef for the president of France.”
Sushi: The Global Catch – “This documentary traces the history of sushi from its origins as Japanese street food to its current status as an internationally popular cuisine.”
I Like Killing Flies – “Come peer into Shopsin’s, a hole-in-the-wall Greenwich Village restaurant that’s served comfort food to satisfied customers for more than 30 years.”
El Bulli: Cooking in Progress – “This appetizing documentary follows world-renowned chef Ferran Adrià as he plans and perfects a new menu from the privacy of his Barcelona lab.”
Step Up To the Plate – “Acclaimed French chef Michel Bras passes the torch (in this case his namesake restaurant) to his son Sébastien in this intimate documentary.”
Le Grand Chef 2: Kimchi Battle – “To settle a dispute about the origins of kimchi, the president of Korea sponsors a contest that attracts a pair of competitive step siblings.”
Le Cirque: A Table in Heaven – “Follow restaurateur Sirio Maccioni as he closes his celebrated Le Cirque restaurant, then works feverishly to relocate and reopen a year later.”
The Restauranteur: “In this foodie documentary, director Roger M. Sherman shadows restaurateur Danny Meyer in an attempt to find out what fuels his business cravings.”
Have you watched any of these? Any great food documentaries not on this list that I should be watching?
