The 15 Best Food TV Shows and Documentaries on Netflix

The Netflix show Ugly Decisions drives the audience all along with the best cuisine, cooking style, and menus.

David Chang, known to be one of the best chefs in the world, is the founder of the two Michelin-star restaurants Momofuku Ko.

Chang is also a New York Times Best Selling author and winner of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire. He appears in the Netflix Docuseries along with some of his friends. During an interview with NPR, Chang revealed that the show’s title originated as an Instagram hashtag and an inside joke with his cooks. 

The show’s cast includes writers, academics, and distinguished food critics. Moreover, it also includes guest appearances of Aziz Ansari, David Chloe, Jimmy Kimmel, Gillian Jacobs, and Danny McBride.

The Chef Show features filmmaker Jon Favreau and chef Ryan Choi as they casually chat while creating various dishes, occasionally with guests and frequently by themselves. 

The show moves along thoroughly at a beautiful pace and wants the audience to think about creating the delicacies independently. Moreover, the show is detailed very well and unfolds leisurely. 

Simply put, The Chef Show is about observing cooks engage in their passions on their schedules and the presence of role models.

The Great British Baking Show involves twelve home bakers from different places competing with one another until one remains. The competition takes place over ten weeks. 

The show is welcoming and creates an environment where the audience will be pleased with the winner. The season-long competition structure provides a space for what would be a character in a reality show.

At the same time, the viewers will be emotionally invested in the competitors. Critics have regarded the show to be optimistic, sweet, and positive at the same time.

Salt Fat Acid Heat is a unique and interesting show on Netflix about food and culinary.

The show features American Chef Samin Nosra, a professional food writer, and is based on the book entitled Sl, Fat, Acid, Heat: Mastering the Elements of Good Cooking.

Salt Fat Acid Heat stands out from any other Netflix show because of the way it explores the series title and why the ingredients are the main key to cooking.

The series has four episodes altogether. It takes the viewers from the olive orchards of Italy to the shores of Japan.

Host Samin makes sure to learn everything she can about the kitchen’s applications of salts, fats, acids, and heat. Viewers can travel along with chef Nosrat to different places and get a chance to learn a lot more about the food they eat. 

High on the Hog is another beautiful show by author and restaurateur Stephen Satterfield. He takes us on a soulful journey into the history of Black-American cuisine. 

Satterfield takes us to the root of what we often think of as Southern cuisine. He journeys along Africa to learn about the basics of African cuisine before tracing those influences back to the food. 

At the same time, the show features heartfelt catharsis moments, such as the dinner Satterfield and cultural preservationist Gabrielle Etienne attend. The dinner was cut short midway through by the appearance of her uncle with a jug of homemade strawberry wine.

 Netflix’s docuseries Street Food take the viewers on a worldwide tour with intimacy.

The show’s first season mainly focuses on the Asian continent, digging into the influential dishes of various countries, including Thailand, Japan, Vietnam, and Indonesia. 

At the same time, Street Food involves interviews with well-known, skillful, and experienced chefs specializing in street food.

Most chefs have dedicated their entire life to the art of cooking. Street Food dives deep into the lives and stories of these extraordinary people and their experiences. 

The show’s second season familiarizes us with Latin America’s people and food culture. Viewers will get a chance to visit the places like Mexico, Peru, Argentina, and Bolivia.

Similarly, the third season focuses on the delicacies in cities like Los Angeles, New Orleans, and Miami.

Cooked is a Netflix show based on the book by journalist Michael Pollan.

The show dives deep into the basic elements of food and portrays our relationship with food. 

The show has four episodes altogether. Michael is a cerebral kind of guy; however, he is fascinated with sensory experience.

Each episode of Cooked is shot based on one of the four elements of life: air, fire, earth, and water. 

The show Taco Chronicles makes us feel for the mouthwatering varieties of taco styles.

The food item is loved and enjoyed by most cuisine lovers worldwide. Taco Chronicles makes sure to dive deep into the specific taco styles and experiments because that is what makes them so great. 

All the classics have been put together, from the carnitas and asada episodes to the intriguing detours into the well-known beef birrira or fish tacos from Mexican Pacific. The show’s episodes are thirty minutes long and involve cultural exploration and conflict. 

However, the conflicts are less prominent, and the show focuses more on restaurateurs and street cooks who are well-known experts in creating particular taco varieties.

The show is very efficient and straightforward. Viewers are sure to become hungry after watching the Taco Chronicles. 

The American cookery program Iron Chef: Quest for an Iron Legend is a remake of Iron Chef and Iron Chef America. Alon Brown and Kristen Kish host the show.

Similarly, Mark Dacascos is the chairman of the cooking show. The Iron Chefs are challenged by the contestants in a cookoff using a secret ingredient. The challenger with the highest score goes up against all five Iron Chefs to become an Iron Legend. 

The first season of the eight-episode television show was released on Netflix on June 15, 2022.

Every episode of the reality tv series consists of three judges. The main judges include Andrew Zimmern and Nilou Motamed. Similarly, A third guest judge usually joins these two.

The competitors in the show put all their efforts into feeding the judges with mouth-watering dishes and getting the Golden Knife. 

Rotten is an entirely different show that engulfs the viewers with the unanimous food supply system.

When we think about the entire system, it is often broken, corrupt dirty, and inhumane. Rotten is a representation of true crime series that involves the stories we have often heard. 

The show is highly relatable for people who buy food in the United States. The episodes examine numerous ways the corporate food chain messes up the physical food chain and what that means for those who farm and consume by exposing food frauds.

Rotten is an Anthony Bourdain project that takes a true-crime method to several food business antics.

It investigates the production and consumption of chicken, milk, honey, garlic, and shellfish. Moreover, it makes the consumers and viewers aware that the entire food chain has been screwed up.

Chef’s Table is one of the most beautifully shot Netflix shows on food and culinary.

Each episode has been wonderfully captured; the show focuses on a single chef who may not always be in charge of a famous restaurant. The plot revolves around how and why they became a chef. 

Chef’s Table follows a natural and homely environment, blended with a mixture of beautiful cuisine and the chef talking about philosophy, mentors, or childhood.

At the same time, comments are added by experts, a member of the family, or a group of colleagues. Each episode is fascinating and enjoyable to watch. One chef creates ecosystems on his plates, like the sea, by making foods that taste like the sea.

The photography looks beautiful; the scope is decidedly global and hugely diverse.

Breakfast, Lunch & Dinner is an American documentary web series premiered in 2019. 

Each episode’s premise involves chef David Chang visiting a famous person in a big city, chatting about cuisine, and eating various regional foods.

Chang is the founder and chef of the Momofuku empire. He opened the Momofuku Noodle Bar in the year 2004 and owned multiple restaurants around the world. Moreover, his presence in the media has been growing excessively. 

However, Breakfast, Lunch & Dinner isn’t Chang’s first attempt at Netflix. He created an eight-part original documentary series called Ugly Delicious, which was highly praised, about the foods we all enjoy and the tales behind them.

Nadiya’s Time To Eat is a Netflix show centering on Nadiya Hussain. Her presence makes the show filled with warmth and radiance.

At the same time, she is an unassuming woman known by U.K. TV viewers and globally expert cooking personalities. 

Nadiya has been a part of The Great British Bake Off and won the 2015 competition. From her show, Nadiya has established herself as a skillful and experienced host.

She introduces her viewers to various flavors and garnishes the menu with her wonderful background stories. Her family-friendly recipes are mostly presented with the practicalities of a working mother just making meals for her busy family.

They are directly linked with her transformation and the joy she claims to have found.

Andre and His Olive Tree is another beautifully shot and captured Netflix show. 

It follows the story of an award-winning chef called Andre Chiang as he decides to close down his two Michelin-star restaurants, which go by the name Restaurant Andre. 

When the restaurant’s closure was announced, Chef André was at the topmost pinnacle of his career.

At the same time, Restaurant André was reportedly the greatest restaurant in Singapore and the second-best in all of Asia. It should be no surprise that his staff, including the culinary community, were in disbelief.

Simply put, Andre and His Olive Tree is a unique story of a man who decides to move on at the right time. The story of his journey, including his staff, is captivating.

Drink Masters is a cocktail mixology competition show.

It features thirteen of the world’s innovative mixologists who find their way through high-stakes cocktail challenges. The competitors try their best to impress judges Reiner and Solarik. 

At the show’s end, one of the mixologists gets a cash prize of $100,000. Similarly, the winner will be declared the title holder of The Ultimate Drink Master.

Created by Matthew Hornburg and Tim Warren, the Netflix show consists of a cast including Tone Bell, Julie Reiner, Frankie Solarik, Gonzo Jimenez, Dale Degroff, Tiffanie Barriere, and Edward Lee.