Chef's Table Season 2 Review

Chef's Table (2015-)
Season 2 (2016)

Created by: David Gelb

Rating: TV-14
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Chef's Table Season 2

Plot:
This Netflix documentary series examines the lives and work of world renowned chefs. Season 1 and 2 each consist of six episodes.

Verdict:
I like any or show or documentary that explores an artist's motivations. These are the top chefs in the world. The food the chefs' make is more art than food. I'd like to know how much it costs, though one chef mentioned five hundred dollars. The episodes become less amazing, just because the food each chef prepares looks pretty similar. And none of the food is as innovative as the first episode, which is my favorite episode.
Watch it.

Season 2 Recap

The first episode was my favorite, and I liked the fifth episode the least. It's not bad, but the episodes become less interesting. I was unfamiliar with the world of fine cuisine so the first episode was really interesting, but the successive episodes tell much the same story. The first highlights the craft, while the focus on other episodes is less artistic value and more background.

Most of the chefs use liquid nitrogen and little flowers for presentation. Nearly all of them claim French food is the finest food, but they diverged. The episodes start to feel similar with the same superlatives, motives, and results. It's probably better not to binge this. Despite that it's still intriguing to get into the mind of an artist. The first episode is definitely worth a watch.

Roe buck, fermented cottage cheese & little red fruits.

In episode one Grant Achatz isn't the chef at a restaurant, but the chef of an experience. Even the layout of the restaurant is designed to be an illusion. Achatz's approach to food is wild. He molds tomato puree to look like strawberries. He wants to experiment with smell, surprise, and even time. He wants to subvert expectations at every point. Achatz creates an edible sugar balloon that is served to patrons floating in the air.

I wondered how each episode could keep my attention with just food, but it goes into the chef's background and how they got started in the business. Some went to school and some worked their way up. Most of the chef's worked on French cuisine before going back to their roots to create Brazilian, Mexican, or another style of food.
Achatz battled cancer and the loss of his taste buds.

In the second episode Alex Atala goes into the forests of Amazonas, Brazil to scrounge for ingredients. This episode is less about food innovation and about the environment. Atala was a rebel and a punk rocker  that tried French food before making Brazilian cuisine.
One sequence shows him working hard to scale a fish. Do you pay extra when he sweats onto the food?

Dominique Crenn's menu is a poem in episode three. The ending was the most melodramatic delving into her adoption and her restaurant is about connecting to people which the shows claims was influenced by her adoption.

Episode four had more padding, delving into Agave fruit and Mezcal which isn't something Enrique Olvera created. It's just prominent at his Mexican restaurant. One of Olvera's dishes is serving just mole sauce on a plate. That's it, just mole. I would love to know how much a plate of mole costs.

Mole sauce. That's the dish, 895 day recycled mole sauce.

He's mixed new with old in a sauce that's been recycled for 895 days. It's another case where the chef abandoned French cuisine for Mexican.

In episode five, the chef uses cheese that's three years old. It's kept in a barn and has to be cleaned before use, scraping what I assume is mold off.

With episode six, Chef Gaggan makes Indian food. He uses little flowers and liquid nitrogen as flourishes. Most of the chefs depicted do.