" In stark contrast to its roll-out of celebrity chef shows like Ugly Delicious and Chef’s Table, Netflix barely promoted the new Chinese-language food series Flavorful Origins prior to its launch this week — there wasn’t even a trailer cut for this new series. But in terms of its format and scope, there’s nothing else in the Netflix catalog quite like it. If you’re a fan of docuseries like Ugly Delicious or Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat, there’s a good chance you will find something that piques your interest in this exploration of regional Chinese cuisine."
And
“the big difference here is that the focus is never on the life of the chef, but rather the life of the dish. You see the farmers picking the ingredients out in the fields and orchards…”
Also
" Flavorful Origins is , perhaps, the food porniest thing you can stream on Netflix right now.".
Thank you so much for announcing this— I tend to avoid the food documentary rabbit hole, but am loving this—- I’ve understood Chaoshan to have a revered cuisine and now see why!
Very interesting and well-produced work. Not really a cooking thing but focused on ingredients and their cultivation and use. Anyone know what this series was produced for (Chinese TV maybe)? It’s an unusual, at least for me, perspective.
An aside… had to wonder why the Netflix closed captioning (in English) was so full of significant word differences from the English language narration.
I just finished watching the whole series. I would dole them one at a time when I needed a little foodie pick-me-up. After watching each I always crave dumplings or noodles.
Finally hit this this weekend. I’m only half way through, but I love that these are short bites with a focus on one ingredient, or one dish, etc. This is food porn at its best. My mouth was watering with every close up presentation of the preparation - definitely would not recommend watching if you are hungry .
I love crab, and I’ve never had marinated crab they were preparing in episode 2 (3?). Even though I was a bit squeamish about watching them marinate those poor crustaceans live, I have to admit I would happily devour the results.
I hope they continue this series and focus on other regional specialties in the future.
Loved this show. I can do without pretentious chefs and Vivaldi in food programming for the rest of my life. It did seem like someone gave them a discount on slow motion photography services, but aside from that, the show was great.
Sent me on a mission to find the few Chao Shan restaurants in my current home of Kuala Lumpur. Was able to actually find and taste the chicken/olives dish from the first episode.
Reviving this to say that (surprise, surprise) I noticed a season 2 was discreetly added to this show! I was flipping through my Netflix and noticed this came up again. When I checked on the “seasons” drop down, lo and behold, they have now added Yunnan cuisine for their next series of episodes. Excited to dive into this for the weekend.
You had me excited for a minute…you mean the episodes from October 2019? Yunnan cuisine? I hope there will be another season, but I can still watch them over again.
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