Sana all: a review of Netflix’s Chef’s Table

FOOD and the culture that surrounds its production and consumption has always taken a backseat to dominant sociological lenses. Maybe because the discipline has always shied from an interpretation of food culture as crass materialism to emphasize the institutional critique of the economy instead.

I am reminded of Marx’s and Feuerbach’s contrasting interpretations of materialism with the latter arguing that, in the final analysis, we are what we eat. The former has presented instead a conceptualization that has nothing to do with food and eating per se but the social arrangements that bring them in varying qualities and quantities depending on class onto household tables. Marx’s historical materialism provides this important sociological insight but there may just be redemption for Feuerbach as of yet.

A counterargument or should I say, a rounding out, has been put forward by Netflix’s documentary series entitled Chef’s Table. The late Anthony Bourdain, at least on TV, had eloquently expounded on the notion that food is more than just nourishment but an entryway into people and their culture. A Chef’s Table mines this thesis to great illuminating effect and adds more insight into how our practices of consumption provide the greatest argument for socialism. Knowing how food shows are de facto elitist, such a positive endorsement may sound strange. The makers of the series are no card carrying party members for sure.

Initially, I felt great discomfort in the idea of fetishizing food especially when it’s reserved only for a particular class and culture. The culinary world and the connoisseurs that inhabit this exclusive club I strongly suspect are in it for the status symbol for the most part - a disposition that is sickening considering that a third of the