Soul Food; Netflix's Chef's Table

Netflix’s new limited series Chef’s Table demonstrates the painful dichotomy that lies at the root of the search for perfection—and the astonishing demand that high level food places on those who create it.

On the one hand, the process of creation, particularly the creation of food, is intoxicatingly life affirming. On the other hand, the process, the hours, the labor itself is extremely taxing. This is clearly an area of fascination for David Gelb, the series creator and the documentarian who directed 2011’s Jiro Dreams of Sushi (and also, strangely, the uninspired horror by rote The Lazarus Effect).

What seems to draw Gelb to this subject, to fascinate him, is an idea of food as the stuff of the soul, of eating as the intermediary between the material body and the transcendental self. As such, the perfection of the art form lies in its transitional, transitory nature. At the same time it is also something that is grounded in history, born out of traditions, and out of the primal elements of soil, fire, water, and air all inscribed within the bounds of human intention (a formulation that the fifteen century German magician Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim cited as the source of all magic).

Gelb’s series focuses on six culinary magicians: Massimo Bottura, Dan Barber, Francis Mallmann, Niki Nakayama, Ben Shewry, and Magnus Nilsson. Each of them confronts the dichotomous problem of food differently. Bottura creates plates that recall the paintings of Gerhard Richter. Barber co-owns the farm that produces nearly all of his food. Mallmann has all but abandoned the restaurant in favor of cooking slabs of meat and fish whose presentation resembles something out of NBCs Hannibal on wild and open flames. What Chef’s Table offers, ultimately, is a look into both the material reality of food—the stress and strain of running a restaurant, the years of scraping by, the anxiety and flares of temper—and its transcendent life. It is no accident that the episodes are scored with classical music. Music as an art form is all about time, organized. And as I watched the episodes of Chef's Table, I couldn’t help but think that the food I was looking at, like the stars which have produced the light we see in the sky, had already disappeared into the bottomless well of the past. But that, I suppose, is part of the point.

Rating: 4 / 4, and a must watch for any lover of food