Here's an eight-episode food show on Netflix that Marissa and I have been watching since, like, March. I liked it a lot! The show features renowned chef David Chang traveling around the world eating food and talking about food and comparing food with a bunch of recognizable actors and comedians and food people.
If that sounds entirely ho-hum to you, it's not! It's not a pretentious show. The "ugly" right there in the title is as honest as it gets. Chang's not a handsome man, and he's constantly stuffing his face full of food that falls apart or drips down his chin. None of the dishes and meals are shot like traditional food porn, either - this ain't Chef's Table.
The first episode is called "Pizza" and in it, Chang and various friends eat authentic pizza in the heart of Naples and then also eat Dominoes. Then they go to Tokyo and have a tuna-and-mayonnaise pizza. Then they go to Frank Pepe's in Connecticut to partake in the famous clam pizza, the top-rated pizza in America. They eat smoked salmon pizza. They debate what makes pizza "pizza," and it's not nearly as "is a hot dog a sandwich" as it sounds like. They debate whether or not pizza is an Italian dish or an Italian-American dish. This is what the show is! It's David Chang traveling all over the place, eating food, watching food get made, at some of the best restaurants in the world, and talking about food and culture with his friends.
The best episode of the seeason was "Fried Chicken," which in addition to everything I described above (but with fried chicken instead of pizza) features some incredibly deep and diverse discussion about racial stereotypes and caricatures.
Weird enough, Ugly Delicious was just renewed for a second season yesterday, eight months after it debuted but more or less exactly when we finally finished it. Cool! I'll definitely be back for more.
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