Top five Chef’s Table episodes
1 FRANCIS MALLMANN, Season 1, Episode 3
Elusive, eccentric, complicated. It’s easy to be fascinated by Argentine chef Francis Mallmann. He lives off the grid on his own island. He builds huge fires in the remote reaches of Patagonia. In one scene, a man wades into the water to deliver him wine as he sits in a rowboat eating a fish he just reeled in. Then there’s his cooking; it’s elemental, it feels real and there isn’t a pair of tweezers in sight. You can almost smell the fire and the lamb cooking al asador in the crisp winter air. It’s a refreshing counterpoint to the many cerebral moments of Chef’s Table.
2 CHRISTINA TOSI, Season 4, Episode 1
Momofuku Milk Bar founder Christina Tosi seems as refreshing as soft-serve after multiple episodes of hyper-serious chefs discussing their personal food philosophies. Tosi wanders the aisles of her local bodega in New York City searching for inspiration for her desserts; that’s how her celebrated Cereal Milk came about. Her food trades heavily in nostalgia, sure, but it’s clear that she has a knack for knowing what makes people happy. This is one of the few episodes that examines food consumed at scale, which also strips away some of the pretentiousness that plagues the series. But Tosi is the star, and her appetite for fun is infectious. Even when she’s getting deep on why she doesn’t ice the sides of her cakes, she catches herself and throws in a sardonic, “that’s my diatribe on cake”.
3 JEONG KWAN, Season 3, Episode 1
Perhaps the most hyped Chef’s Table episode, it’s a (very polite) rebuttal to much of what today’s top chefs claim to stand for. Jeong Kwan, who cooks in a cloistered temple outside Seoul, is the real deal. Despite never training formally as a chef, the Buddhist nun so enchanted Eric Ripert with her food that he brought her to New York to cook at Le Bernardin. Watching her prepare a meal feels as far as you can get from fine-dining. She mostly cooks ingredients she has grown herself, alone, slowly and in silence. Everything is about nourishment and harmony. Watching her movements and listening to her talk is incredibly soothing. The whole episode feels like a meditation.
4 NIKI NAKAYAMA, Season 1, Episode 4
If you love to back an underdog, Niki Nakayama is the chef for you. Not only did she break into kaiseki, an especially male-dominated style of Japanese cooking, she also defied the expectations of a family who didn’t believe she could succeed. In just one example of her ambition, it’s policy at her tiny LA restaurant N/Naka to not ever repeat any dish for a diner, keeping extensive notes on their past visits. In my favourite scene of the episode, Nakayama agonises over the menu for an upcoming guest as her sous chef Carole Iida-Nakayama offers advice. “He’s a child,” Iida-Nakayama snaps, eventually. “He’s eight years old.”
5 MICHEL TROISGROS, Chef’s Table: France, Episode 4
Father versus son. Tradition versus change. Salmon and sorrel. Timeless themes combine with cult dishes and Michelin stars in this episode, focusing on the weight of culinary history as it falls on the shoulders of Michel Troisgros. The Troisgros name is synonymous with cuisine nouvelle and is known to just about every gourmand of a certain age. The story of a third-generation family restaurant in a small French town – famous for a dish of salmon in sorrel sauce – is a stark contrast to today’s era of restaurant groups and gimmicky dishes made for Instagram. This is a story of how legacies are made, and the enduring influence of French tradition. All Chef’s Table episodes are on Netflix.