Monday, March 19, 2018

David Chang: "Ugly Delicious" on Netflix, all about the joys of food.

If you can stream Netflix, you should check out "Ugly Delicious" which is a peek into David Chang's food life, real life and restaurant life. You can google him and see where his restaurants are but this short series is about him, not so much about his commerce.

Watch the first episode and then, please, watch the second one and the third one.  He is all about the food, all about cooking, not about the glamour of it all. The second episode is about tacos, tacos around the world, how almost all cultures have food wrapped in some kind of bread, be it the crepe, white bread, tortilla, pizza dough, nan, dumpling, and on and on. How this street food has become a constant in every place in the world.

The third episode is about Thanksgiving, going back home, sucking it up, dealing with family and loving it all. There is one line in this episode that says something like this: The amount of extra cooking at Thanksgiving is part to fill the hours that could otherwise be filled with emotional connection with your family members.  Which is so true, we all often sequester ourselves in the kitchen at holidays because we do not want to have any emotional connection to those we invited to sit at our Thanksgiving table!  Which is rather perverse but very understandable.  Too much emotion, let's let that go. Just let me cook. My daughter might raise a glass to that sentiment. 

David Chang appears to be just a regular guy in this series.  He swears a lot, says fuck a lot, is irreverent and yet gets teary when he is around his Mom. He loves food, the culture of it, the preparation of it, the simplicity of it. He has a great smile and he has seductive dimples! His faith is in food, not in the preciousness of it, not in the perfection of it, just in really good food.  If you like food, even a little, watch this show. David Chang makes me laugh and makes me want to get back to my stove and cook. And I know that whatever I make, if I like it, then it's good.  "Ugly Delicious" is good watching, it will make you laugh, think and want to cook. 

I regret that I did not visit one of David Chang's restaurants when I was in NYC last year. I might need to remedy that later this year.
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