I love Chef's Table (on Netflix), not necessarily for the food stories but mostly for the cooks' life stories: coming back from death sentences, finding love in foreign countries, leaving established careers and mostly the defiant fight to find their path.
It is about normal people with a sudden discovery of passion for food and proving how small turns in life lead to greatness. The music is so engaging, the images are vivid to accentuate you the eccentricity of the dishes and punctuates fast victories in a life so short and ephemeral for a chef.
One of the stories seems to stuck with me, the incredible life of Ivan Orkin, the ramen chef from New York, and his quest to conquer Japan on ramen. You will hear him describing how he was floundering life when young, and then going to Japan just because he learnt the language, finding love by accident, becoming widow with a kid and in the end finding his call in cooking ramen.
More surprisingly was his adventure to find love and consequently find a call to start cooking ramen. After a career as cook in New York, being widow, he goes back in Japan, find again love and then stumbles on ramen noodles. Works from the bottom up and becomes an icon on a Japanese daily dish. In his own words "Wow, I've kind of done it!". He is recognized by the who's who of ramen in Japan and also is one of the artisan ramen chefs (the soup, the side dishes and the noodles are made in his restaurant).
In his mom's words "He went from darkness to life". An under-achiever from a family of over-achievers, he works a while as a normal chef but love for Japan drives him back there. He falls in love with his second wife in Japan, although the chances were remote: even his second wife recognizes that he is not her type, that he looked funny and even mocked him on his presence. But against the odds, the feelings of being together just melted all those incompatibilities.
The plot is about love for food, love for preserving old tastes (umami), drive to find a path in life, and the underlining human connections even for people from different cultures: a family stretched on two continents, living life in different places with the man being a ramen chef. What a story and a defiance to any norms in life !
You can see also his TED talk.
It is about normal people with a sudden discovery of passion for food and proving how small turns in life lead to greatness. The music is so engaging, the images are vivid to accentuate you the eccentricity of the dishes and punctuates fast victories in a life so short and ephemeral for a chef.
One of the stories seems to stuck with me, the incredible life of Ivan Orkin, the ramen chef from New York, and his quest to conquer Japan on ramen. You will hear him describing how he was floundering life when young, and then going to Japan just because he learnt the language, finding love by accident, becoming widow with a kid and in the end finding his call in cooking ramen.
More surprisingly was his adventure to find love and consequently find a call to start cooking ramen. After a career as cook in New York, being widow, he goes back in Japan, find again love and then stumbles on ramen noodles. Works from the bottom up and becomes an icon on a Japanese daily dish. In his own words "Wow, I've kind of done it!". He is recognized by the who's who of ramen in Japan and also is one of the artisan ramen chefs (the soup, the side dishes and the noodles are made in his restaurant).
In his mom's words "He went from darkness to life". An under-achiever from a family of over-achievers, he works a while as a normal chef but love for Japan drives him back there. He falls in love with his second wife in Japan, although the chances were remote: even his second wife recognizes that he is not her type, that he looked funny and even mocked him on his presence. But against the odds, the feelings of being together just melted all those incompatibilities.
The plot is about love for food, love for preserving old tastes (umami), drive to find a path in life, and the underlining human connections even for people from different cultures: a family stretched on two continents, living life in different places with the man being a ramen chef. What a story and a defiance to any norms in life !
You can see also his TED talk.
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