Breaking abroad from the banausic “food porn” Instagram accounts and appearance on chic chefs that accept bedeviled aliment chat in the accomplished bristles years, “Ugly Delicious” is a auspicious documentary alternation that, instead of absorption on taste, capacity the belief abaft how aliment is fabricated and who creates it.
David Chang, James Beard award-winning chef and Momofuku king, is the self-proclaimed insubordinate who leads the alternation and its admirers on a adventure about aliment that is funny, accurate and sometimes a little weird.
At aboriginal glance, the alternation seems simple because of adventure titles like “Pizza,” “Tacos” and “Fried Chicken.” Once the eyewitness dives in, however, “Ugly Delicious” proves it is not your boilerplate affable appearance .
Rather than featuring the best taco in the apple or the best adorable abjure in the American South, “Ugly Delicious” portrays foods as charcoal of assorted cultures and highlights how aliment has acquired over time. Throughout the show, Chang and his best acquaintance and assistant extraordinaire, aliment biographer Peter Meehan, allocution to chefs, aliment writers and accustomed foodies akin who prove to be added absorbed in the origins of a pizza — and the bodies who fabricated it — than how brittle its band is.
While the alternation shows aperitive footage of beginning Neapolitan pizza and bleared Viet-Cajun abjure — so bright and animate that you about feel as you yourself are appropriate in the kitchen — it about describes the aftertaste of its featured aliment at all. Often, alike aback Chang seems to absorb hours advancing the featured aliment with the chef, consistently hyping up how acceptable it will taste, he and his accompany accord annihilation added than an acceptable arch nod or a “d–n, that’s delicious” aback they assuredly get to eat it.
This abridgement of acoustic description is generally unsatisfying, but the viewer’s ache to alive vicariously through Chang and Meehan’s acceptable eats is about anon replaced by a ache to apprentice how aliment can accommodate a cultural and amusing lens to appearance the world.
Throughout the show, Chang and Meehan, forth with their ever-growing assemblage of foodie friends, including funny celebrities like Georgetown alum Nick Kroll (COL ’01), accouterment aggregate from the accent of acclimation attitude and addition in aliment to the role of aliment in immigrant cultures in the United States.
Referencing Chang’s own ancestors of Korean immigrants, the appearance generally cycles aback to the affair of aliment activity as a way for immigrants to break affiliated to their roots while award means to allotment their cuisines with American culture.
The appearance appearance able claimed anecdotes of Chang’s life, as able-bodied as beneath personal, but still poignant, immigrant stories, such as a Vietnamese-American shrimper’s acquaintance with the Ku Klux Klan in the “Shrimp & Crawfish” episode.
In this sense, the alternation feels accurate to Chang’s own acquaintance of and affiliation to food. Although “Ugly Delicious” beasts from attempts to awning a array of cultural aliment experiences, activity from cities as abutting as Washington, D.C., to those as far as Tokyo, it consistently allotment to how Chang sees food. As apparent in his arbitrary comparisons of anniversary aliment to assorted Asian dishes, to interviews with insubordinate chefs like himself, such as René Redzepi and Massimo Bottura, “Ugly Delicious” does not attack to action absolute perspectives on aliment culture.
Although Chang highlights a array of restaurants and chefs throughout the show, his attitude against anniversary dining area is universally positive. He and Meehan advertise the acclaimed Michelin-star representations of tortellini and dumplings, but they appointment places like Dominos and KFC with the aforementioned excitement. Chang always emphasizes that “good aliment is from everywhere, and it’s not aloof from one perspective.”
But for a appearance that so foolishly asserts the accent of assortment aural food, it abundantly lacks assortment aural its cast. Best notably, about every chef and aliment biographer featured is male. Although the alternation does affection a few abbreviate clips from absurd women, the complete bites are mostly bush and are overshadowed by the about added accordant macho statements. The appearance additionally actively lacks any representation of atramentous chefs or aliment writers alfresco of the “Fried Chicken” adventure — acrid because that the amusing focus of that adventure is that atramentous chefs appetite to be accepted for added than aloof absurd chicken.
