How do I put this as clearly as possible? David Chang is a fucking genius. Not just because of his singular skill as a chef, or this recent undertaking as an impresario of food and cooking television. But in the way he approaches all of it. By seamlessly blending the personal and the professional with a pop-intellectualism that is both entertaining and enlightening. That fills a huge, massive Anthony Bourdain-sized hole in the world.
Admittedly, I didn’t really like David Chang’s last Netflix effort, Breakfast, Lunch & Dinner, in which Chang, along with his celebrity friends, walk, and talk, and eat their way through the culture and cuisine of different cities around the world. It was a show that relied too much on the glamour of celebrity. And while some of the conversations were interesting, the series didn’t quite have the heft of Ugly Delicious. It felt typical.
Ugly Delicious is anything but. Ugly Delicious is excruciatingly brilliant.
The first episode of the first season of Ugly Delicious was a revelation. All about pizza, the episode was an obsessive deconstruction of one of the world’s favourite foods. Watching it was nothing short of inspiring. You know what it’s like. When you’re listening to a person talk about something with so much passion and knowledge, that you too get swept away by their enthusiasm. It could be about golf. Or birdwatching. Or philately. Or pizza.
The format was also unlike anything I’d seen before. We begin in Brooklyn with David Chang and Peter Meehan talking to Mark Iacono. They’re at Carroll Gardens, at Mark’s celebrated pizzeria, Lucali, where he explains to them that when it comes to pizza, he’s really only interested in what’s considered “traditional”. It sets a scene. It creates a mood. And then, just as suddenly, we’re with Aziz Ansari in Tokyo. And then we’re in New Haven, and Napoli, in segments hosted by Mark and Peter. We’re traversing the globe, with an assortment of individuals – chefs, writers, actors – in search of answers. Each one challenging their own beliefs and perceptions of what pizza was, is, and should be.
I was, admittedly, an easy mark. Not just because of my abiding love of pizza (a childhood devoted to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles probably had something to do with this), but because of how the episode deftly balances history, opinion, philosophical musings, and intellectual wankery. I loved it. I was hooked.
It was very apparent, right from the first episode, that this was a food show the same way Jaws was a movie about a shark. Ugly Delicious uses pizza, and fried chicken, and steak, and Indian food as a kick-off point for much larger conversations about the world. The series exploits Chang’s infectious curiosity and brazen geekiness to great effect, consistently asking the kind of questions that force us, the audience, to confront the clichés, stereotypes, and preconceived notions that often shape our world view.
This second season of Ugly Delicious, is more of the same. Only smarter. Only better. Only more refined. Every one of its four episodes are written and edited with such precision that it hits you in all four quadrants.
Our relationship with food is one that is lifelong and constantly evolving. The things we eat and the people we eat with make up some of the most meaningful experiences in our lives. Those celebratory dinners for birthdays and anniversaries. Coffee breaks. Lunch meetings. First dates. Your first steak. This is a series that reminds us of each and every one of those moments.
Just take the first episode. In what is the most personal hour of the series so far, we see David Chang deal with becoming a father. What is ostensibly an episode about one self-obsessed man coming to terms with the selflessness of having a child, is merely the catapult to a series of delicious conversations about the kind of food that kids eat, the myths surrounding pregnancy, Japanese school lunches, and about dealing with the ultimate moment of reckoning when something else, when someone else, becomes the most important thing in your life.
It is the perfect opener to the series. Its emotional beats echoing throughout the remaining three episodes as Chang, and his slew of sidekicks and celebrity guests, talk about Indian food and appropriation, steak and sexism, and shawarma and the plight of post-colonial geography. There is so much intimacy and honesty here that it will upend your thinking on a great many things; on race, on economics, on gender and privilege, on the things we eat and why we eat them. I promise.
The first season of Ugly Delicious was a clever and unique approach to making a food show. This second season is indispensable television.
P.S. As I greedily binged on these four episodes of Ugly Delicious, wishing I had more, I couldn’t help but think about those four episodes of Breakfast, Lunch & Dinner and how much they felt like rejected ideas for this series that somehow ended up being repackaged into something else. It’s the only explanation I can think of for such a truncated season.
Ugly Delicious
Netflix, Season 2, 4 Episodes
Showrunners: David Chang and Morgan Neville
Host: David Chang
Cast: Nick Kroll, Aziz Ansari, Padma Lakshmi, Helen Rosner, Chris Ying, Danny McBride, Bill Simmons, and Dave Choe.
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