Madeline
Ask anyone who has ever had a meal with me. I love food. I love all kinds of food. I love street food and fancy food. I love tofu and thick filet mignons. I love a great salad and a juicy burger with all the fixings and onion rings. I love it all! So it’s no surprise that as someone who absorbs a questionably healthy amount of content, that some of my favorite shows are food shows. And so I’ve compiled a list of my top 8 food shows.
Top Chef
Top Chef needs to be first in this list as this was the first food show I became obsessed with. This show has single handedly taught me so much about food that I know today. Such as what an amuse bouche is and how to properly chop an onion.
I love Padma and I love Tom. Top Chef was also my introduction to my favorite food show personality, Anthony Bourdain. I’m currently running through all the episodes and tear up every time he comes on.
About five years ago, Top Chef had a free event in the small town I lived in in the San Francisco Bay Area. What is the coincidence of that? I went and had the pleasure of meeting Angelo Sosa and Casey Thompson. I was sincerely star struck and fumbled my words as I spoke to them. I just love this show.
Taste the Nation
Have I mentioned that I love Padma Lakshmi? When I saw this show with Padma I had to see it. What I really appreciate about this show is that it highlights that typical American food is not American food. It all comes from different cultures to make up the taste of America, each episode highlighting a different culture. She did Thai food in Las Vegas, Native American Food in Arizona, and my favorite, Chinese food in San Francisco. I love Padma and I love the variety of food available to me, thanks to all the cultures who have developed it. So she deserves to be on my top 8 food shows list twice, once here and once on Top Chef.
Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives
Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives, also known as triple D, is not very high on the list for me; however, I wanted to include it for a number of reasons. For one, the host, Guy Fieri, grew up in a small town of population of under 1,400, about 25 miles from the town I grew up in. And my mother currently lives in the next town over.
The other reason this show is on my top 8 food shows list is that this show makes my mouth water. Every single thing he eats looks amazingly delicious. If you look online, it’s easy to find where these places are and it is not below me to use these lists to find a yummy place to eat wherever in the US I may be. So although the show itself is just okay, it’s the food I’m really after and this show delivers.
Man Vs. Food
Similar to Triple D, this show is all about the good every day food. But my favorite part of the show is the Man vs. Food part. The hosts, Adam Richman and Casey Webb, find food challenges and attack them head on. As the name suggests, it’s man vs. food.
From what I’ve heard, the reason they switched hosts is because the original host, Adam Richman, was facing health issues due to the amount of unhealthy food he was required to eat during the show. Watching season one compared to his last season, there is a clear weight gain. Definitely not a healthy show but it is a yummy one.
Chef’s Table
Thanks to Chef’s Table, I now have a habit of spending entirely too much money on a single meal. Chef’s Table is really about the art of cooking and how beautiful and delicious food can be. Every chef in this show has a story they are trying to tell with their food. They all have a philosophy and this is their way of executing on that philosophy. This show has introduced a new way to look at food for me and therefore is on my top 8 food shows list.
Ugly Delicious
Ugly Delicious is a pretty standard travel food show, but what makes it so great is the host, David Chang. I really want to be best friends with David Chang. He knows his food stuff. He is very likeable. And I want to travel the world and eat with him. And this show allows me to do just that. This is why Ugly Delicious is on my top 8 food shows list.
Good Eats
Alton Brown, the host of Good Eats, is another host I would want to hang out with, but more in a father kinda way. When I discovered Good Eats I binged all 14 seasons starting with the first one in 1999. Although the show is a little dated, Brown is a bubbly and knowledgeable host. Each episode covers a food topic and goes into the science on how that food works. The most notable one for me is the egg episode when Brown shows the perfect way to make a hard boiled egg. I’ve had plenty of arguments about this with my boyfriend since, but I know I’m right because Alton Brown told me I am.
Lucky for us all they brought back Good Eats, and I am all about it! Thanks Alton Brown for bringing this back into my life for more cooking tips and tricks.
Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown
I don’t think I can express how much I love Anthony Bourdain. To put it this way, he is the only celebrity whom I cried for when I learned he had passed. And I don’t mean shed a tear. I mean I ugly cried.
I loved his No Reservations. I loved his Layover. I loved him on Top Chef (see above). I loved his book, Kitchen Confidential. I even enjoyed (I can’t say loved) his fictional book, Bone in the Throat. I was lucky enough to watch him live about a year prior to his passing.
Parts Unknown is just another show in his great legacy that was great. I miss him as a staple in the Food Show world. I could make a post only on Anthony Bourdain, but this post is about my top 8 food shows and so I had to include Anthony Bourdain somehow.
