I recently watched Ratatouille with my girlfriend and loved it, especially with how much I've been into French cuisine recently. I was wondering what other TV shows or movies everyone else likes that are cooking related and aren't reality shows or competitions?
Posted Dec 6, 2021, 8:34 PM UTC
The Chef Show on Netflix is great. So is the movie Chef which inspired it. My guy Roy Choi is literally the exact opposite of Gordon Ramsey. Like the Bob Ross of cooking, watching him work calms me
John Favreau's film Chef is a fun one, iirc. Saw it years ago but remember enjoying it.
Watched that movie last week and came in to work the next day flying
Hannibal. Enthralling cooking scenes that mess with you and make you question everything. They are a core part of the way that series gets to you imho.
Wow. I love Hannibal and it is a memorable series but to bring up the food that was eaten in this context is hard for me to digest. ;-) I'm not necessarily disagreeing because I find this fascinating in a way--but on the other hand, eating people is a bridge too far for me.
Thanks for posting that--sincerely. I like things that make me think.
Thing is I always took it as brilliantly shot cooking....but you never know what he is cooking. Seemed to me it was not all... That. And wondering what was and what wasn't.... Should I be in awe or disgusted? That weird fascination.
The beauty of the process. Questioning what is OK to eat.... Where is the line.
I certainly took a lot away from it in many ways, including my food morality.
Indeed.
Remember that song bird?
Just so powerful--in so many ways.
Tampopo, a very weird love letter to ramen and a fabulous film
Never gonna look at an egg yolk or shrimp the same way
Tampopo is the greatest movie about food ever made and I will fight anyone who says otherwise.
I really like Midnight Diner. It is about a diner that opens after midnight, where a chef listens to his customer's stories and woes every episode without judgement. The stories can be a bit cheesy but it's very cosy and usually centres around what memories or meaning each dish brings to those customers.
If you like anime, YuruCamp/Laid Back Camp is more about camping but damn when they start cooking and eating... i get serious food envy. And it doesn't help then then describe how good the food is.
Uhh food wars shokugeki no soma if your looking for a good food anime although some would say it’s slightly nsfw
Hundred foot journey!!
Was scrolling through to see if anybody recommended this!!! Ahh its soo good!!! Here the IMDB page for anyone curious but its such a sweet film about Indian and French cuisine.
actually my two favorite cuisines... absolutely gonna have to give this a watch. thank you to both of you for the recommendation!
Oooh yes love love this one!
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Big Night is perhaps one of the best food movies of all time.
Some day I vow to make a timpano.
I did it once, it was a lot of fun, but not necessarily that delicious... Maybe it needed more sauce or cheese or something.
Food Wars is a guilty pleasure of mine
5 minutes in and I was like wtf this is literally food porn.
If you can look past the "anime-ness" of the show, they go into a lot of detail about cooking techniques, how flavors work, gastronomy, and other things. It's very fascinating and as far as anime protagonists go, Soma is one of my favorites. He is a little arrogant at times, but also very kind and encouraging to those around him, even if they aren't always friendly to him first.
Oh it didn't deter me. I think I even got to season 2. It just caught me by surprise at the beginning and got me in a laughing fit. Great at setting the tone right away. I laugh every time the characters get a foodgasm, heavy on the "-gasm".
Chef’s table on Netflix is a pretty cool docuseries about top chefs from all walks of life. I find it very soothing and inspiring at the same time.
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Babette’s Feast!
Does “Waiting” count?
The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover.
I'm gonna second Food Wars. It's totally outrageous, and fun if you go in knowing that!
Yep. Food Wars and Delicious in Dungeon for me
Anthony Bourdain’s no reservations might technically be reality but it is educational and eye opening. Same for Biazzare foods with Andrew Zimmerman. Reality but high minded with an eye for education and information.
There is no definition by which those are not 100% reality TV lol
I was making a case for them to be informative and educational enough to not fall into the same category as bullshit like DDD and Man VS. Food.
Sure, but it seems like OP wants fiction, not necessarily high brow culture
This. Recently picked it back up after seeing the first few seasons years ago. Parts Unknown is great too.
I assume someone already said this, but GOOD EATS GOOD EATS GOOD EATS!!! It's one of the oldest (of its genre) and BEST cooking shows ever made, IMO. My mom and I watched Good Eats when I was a kid and I revisited it during Covid, after I had become a sermi-experienced home cook. Watched all 16 seasons (including the new ones), and I LEARNED SO MUCH.
It's a combination of cooking technique, SERIOUS science, nutritional anthropology, history--and it's hilarious to boot.
Downton Abbey's kitchen drama is fun. It's also interesting to see some of how big house kitchens like that may have operated before electricity and appliances.
I would watch a whole series of Downton Abbey but just about their kitchen
I just became aware there is something like this - a series called The Victorian Way on the English Heritage channel (YouTube channel I think?). Here's a link to one of the episodes. I haven't watched it yet, I saw it mentioned on another Youtube channel.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JD9j-Xka6sA
That's goofy but also fun!
Electric toasters destroying everything
Nothing a bucket of sand can't fix.
In one of the Downton Abbey-associated books, they discussed the incomes of the servants. Cooks were the 3rd highest paid position after the butler and head of household (ala Mrs. Hughes) if I remember right. And some ladies of the manor would compete to get the best cooks so in some households, the cook made more than the butler!
Dinner Rush is a fun movie that all takes place in one evening at a restaurant, with multiple story lines.
Also Big Night, about two Italian brothers and their struggling restaurant.
And It’s Complicated isn’t directly about cooking, but Meryl Streep’s character owns a bakery, and there is a long montage showing her making chocolate croissants. She separates a bunch of eggs in The Hours, but I don’t think that’s sufficient for your needs.
If you want to learn about cooking and what’s behind it. There was a show called “Good Eats” Alton Brown is amazing. You can learn a lot from him, more then just reading a recipe, but why things work like they do.
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Chef is one of my fav movies!
Julie and Julia makes me want to cook through some cookbook everytime I watch it. Their love for cooking is contagious. Edit: And Cooked! Very interesting take on cooking.
That's what I came in here to post.
:bow
I still can’t believe Julia Child missed the point of the whole thing.
What point?
She hated the entire thing, she perceived it as someone getting famous riding in her coattails rather than in her own merits.
That opinion has merits though. Because that's effectively what she was doing. It was a stunt, novel for its time, but still a stunt.
I cooked my way through Julia Childs' book in the 70s, except for ingredients I couldn't find which were integral to the recipe & ingredients i couldn't afford (a fair amount for me back then). Unfortunately I wasn't clever enough to write a book about it. My favorite was traditional ratatouille, which I hated before I actually learned how to make it!