Watching Chef’s Table Pizza, opened up a whole world of food before my eyes and made me realize that our original matters of concern surrounding pizza simply arise out of our novice, inflexible, and one-sided perception of it as junk food. The recently released docuseries on September 7, 2022, on Netflix is an eye-opener, to say the least.
All six episodes respectfully grant an individual space for six chefs around the world who view pizza in a unique light. Each episode is laid down by the vision of a different director, and it speaks in the way the camera maps each chef’s story.
The official Netflix synopsis reads:
Bread. Cheese. Sauce. Pizza might be a time-tested formula, but these six chefs from around the world take it to whole new levels.
–Chef’s Table Pizza Review Contains Mild Spoilers-
Conversations around pizza are almost always one-dimensional. The one major point of discussion that arises whenever pizza is concerned is whether one likes it with the pineapple topping or not.
Ann Kim effortlessly breaks it down in a positive light in episode 3 and it did wonders to open up my mind about the pizza pie and its evolving potential. According to her, “pizza … is a gateway to introduce people to flavors that they were resistant to trying”. Although I haven’t made up my mind about pineapple on pizza yet, this series has definitely cautioned me against closing off my faculties wherever pizza and its million revolutions are concerned.
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Food is intrinsically tied to one’s memories and family. Each time the six chefs introduced their stories to the camera, they began with their origin stories which had a lot to do with their childhoods and how their families impacted them to find a medium of expression through pizza in their future years of life. Moreover, travelling to different locations in the world takes you places, not just topographically but also emotionally and mentally. All six of these chefs whom we met through this season of Chef’s Table are living proofs that their experiences in life dictate their choices of concocting their own versions of the pizza pie.
Even though all of them have led distinct lives, there are some grounds that connect their story and can be interwoven as chapters of the same one. All of them have had their own set of struggles along their journey and dealt with the pressure to deliver regardless of their circumstances. Additionally, in each episode of Chef’s Table Pizza, a few food critics or other professionals sit down to add to the life story of these chefs and expand on their brand of work.
Through it all, the filming feels quite personal, which allows the chefs to dig into their past One can feel their raw emotions and pain at their peak at certain points of the narrative. And then finally, we have the perfect score complimenting and supporting their stories and also becoming one with them, especially in moments of the musical crescendo where you can see their anecdotes reaching the moment of their fruition.
Starting with Chris Bianco, Gabriele Bonci, Ann Kim, Franco Pepe, Yoshihiro Imai, and then finally moving on to Sarah Minnick’s account, each of these people is creating an “alchemy” of ingredients, and in the process raising a “revolution”. For them, it’s not so much a reduction of it to preparing food and serving it as it is about dignifying each and every step that is involved in the creation of the so-called pizza.
Chef’s Table Pizza: Worth the Watch?
Yes, it absolutely is. And hopefully, as you can make out from my aforementioned views on the season, Ann Kim’s episode, i.e. the third one is a different class of genius on its own.
At first, I thought Gabriele Bonci’s second episode was my favorite one because it particularly goes into portraying his story in the same massive form as his former “larger than life” character ‘Bonci’ was on TV. The color mapping on the screen is a great means of story-telling, especially in his episode since it adds the necessary theatricality, a possible strategic move by the director to reflect the huge celebrity he had become and how it was taking a toll on him. Red light symbolizes his anger, green reveals him slipping into intoxication as an escape, ultimately projecting his emotions at large to showcase him as the protagonist of his own life.
In stark contrast to that, the following episode of Ann Kim easily surpassed it by depicting her brutal vulnerability as a Korean immigrant in the U.S. She didn’t grow up with the desire to become a chef and wasn’t anywhere close to feeling passionately for pizza in the early days. There is a character arc that you see forming in her story, and it’s all laid down by herself. There are barely any critics or others speaking for her in this episode.
Her pizza then becomes a reflection of the American landscape where diversity coexists, and it’s also a medium to embrace her own Koreanness. Kim’s episode in Chef’s Table Pizza has heart. It’s the most vulnerable piece of all and the camera captures the feeling of alienation that she initially felt trapped in. It allows you to taste and smell the food she’s creating and it’s only possible because it’s not a singular story existing in isolation. It’s her story, it’s her family’s story and it’s every immigrant’s story “who feels like you can’t choose your destiny”.
All the six episodes of Chef’s Table: Pizza are now streaming on Netflix.
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