The Best 16 Food Shows on Netflix

Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat

Samin Nosrat is best known as a renowned chef and food writer and has been making waves in the culinary world since the release of her acclaimed 2016 book Salt Fat Acid Heat. A follow-up to her previous work, it explores how salt affects our bodies and diets, and how it can change the way we eat. She takes us inside the mind of a true master chef. In four episodes that span four continents, Nosrat dives into the science behind her favorite ingredients — fat, acid, heat, and salt—and reveals how these fundamental building blocks affect the way we taste, smell, think, feel, and live.

Nadiya's Time To Eat

If you're a fan of the popular show The Gear British Bake Off, then you are no doubt a fan of professional baker Nadiya Hussain. The season six winner, Hussain was a smash hit from the very beginning but it was the baking of her very own wedding cake as her final showstopper that bagged her the ultimate prize. Following her success on the show, she has become an established professional Chef, appeared on cooking shows alongside famous Chefs, and has even released her own cookbook titled Nadiya Bakes.

 Now, she has her very own original series, which follows Nadiya as she travels around the UK teaching people how to cook healthy meals. She gives tips and tricks along the way, and her guests are always happy to help. Each episode features a different theme like "filling up", "making friends", and " street food". There are even a few cooking competitions thrown into the mix.

Is It Cake?

Created by Dan Cutforth and Jane Lipsitz, this show premiered in February 2020. It follows three teams of amateur bakers competing against each other to make elaborate cakes that resemble everything from cars to celebrities. Each week, one baker is eliminated based on viewer votes. The show began airing weekly episodes on January 23, 2020. In addition to being broadcast online, the show airs on TLC, Food Network Canada, Discovery Family Channel, and MTV2.

Somebody Feed Phil

In 2017, comedian/writer/director Phil Rosenthal took his talents to the road. He traveled around the globe eating everything from street food to fine dining and documented it all on YouTube. The result is Somebody Feed Phil, a six-episode foodie tour de force hosted by the man himself. This unique journey takes him to some of the best places in the world to eat and drink, including Singapore, Mexico City, New Orleans, Paris, London, Seoul, Tokyo, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and many more. Rosenthal visits restaurants where people cook and serve food in creative ways. He eats traditional dishes like kimchi tacos and chilaquiles, and he tries out foods that are completely foreign to him, such as deep-fried insects and ice cream sandwiches. He even goes inside homes and kitchens to see some authentic family cooking. You're sure to have a good laugh watching this show! 

Street Food: Best Look Into Local Cuisines

Street Food is an American television series produced by Travel Channel about street foods around the world, hosted by actor Anthony Bourdain. Each episode features one city and focuses on the local cuisine, including traditional dishes, modern adaptations, and cultural aspects. While many food and television shows tend to overlook the lives of street food sellers, this program takes an inside look at what happens behind the scenes and how these people prepare the food that is so popular throughout their country.

Million Pound Menu 

Million Pound Menu has an idea very similar to the TV Show Shark Tank. In America, people invest in businesses that they think might make money. People who own restaurants give their business ideas to Million Pound Menu to see if they can get investment capital. During these events, known as "pop-ups", the owners of the restaurants try to convince potential investors that their restaurant would make a profit. This show is fun and entertaining to watch. Plus, it shows us the reality behind the scenes of running a restaurant, something we rarely get to see.

The Layover

With the massive success of the late Anthony Bourdain's No Reservations and CNN’s Parts Unknown, The Layover often goes unnoticed. The premise of the show is to show people how to get the most out of a city when you’re only there for a few hours. You follow Anthony Bourdain through the streets of some of the world’s largest hubs and get to see where he recommends you eat, sleep, play and get absolutely hammered on his producer’s dime. What’s great about this show is how much fun Bourdain genuinely seems to be having and the profound relationships he appears to have with the locals he eats with. Whether it’s a famous Brazilian Chef that he’s been friends with for years or a local Toronto cab driver that picked him up at the airport - the Layover will make Anthony Bourdain the number one person you’d have wanted to share a beer with in the middle of nowhere.

Chef's Table

This one is for the artistic foodie in all of us. The Netflix original Chef’s Table follows the success of different accomplished Chefs and how their innovative food concepts have changed the cooking world. What really makes this show great is how beautifully filmed and directed it is.  It’s impossible to watch Chef’s Table and not be hungry after experiencing the beautiful handmade creations from the many international Chefs presented. This docu-series help us discover the world’s most ambitious Chefs and their journeys to where they are. On top of the incredible stories and personalities of the different gastronomic geniuses, Chef’s Table really showcases something we all forget cooking can be: art.

Cook Your Ass Off

A healthy twist on the fan-favorite TV show Chopped; Cook Your Ass Off is a competition series that takes a person who is looking to make positive healthy changes to their diet and has three chefs compete to build to be their personal chef and help change their lives. What we love about this show is how much you can learn about the health benefits of different foods and how easy it is to make healthy alternatives to the unhealthy snacks we all love. Though a TV show about healthy eating sounds boring, Cook Your Ass Off brings the fun of mystery ingredients and personalities that make it impossible to stop watching.

The Mind Of A Chef

Chef and writer/director David Gelb spent four seasons following some of the most talented people in America cooking and talking about what drives them to keep doing what they love. From New York City to San Francisco, Chicago to Los Angeles, and beyond, he found out why they chose to become Chefs, how they got into it, and what keeps them coming back. The fourth season follows 10 chefs across five cities - Boston, LA, Miami, NYC and Washington DC -- as they talk openly about what makes them tick, and how they balance being both artists and businessmen. We meet the Chefs who are making waves in the industry today, such as Alain Ducasse, Daniel Boulud, Masa Takayama, Michael Voltaggio, and Eric Ripert. Plus, we hear from the chefs' mentors, like Alice Waters, Jean-Georges Vongerichten, and Wolfgang Puck. We also learn about the challenges facing young chefs today, like finding affordable space and getting paid enough to survive.

Zumbo's Just Desserts

If you have a sweet tooth, this one's for you! A crazy, wacky Willy Wonka-esque show that showcases the magic and awe of pastries making. Zumbo’s Just Desserts is the ultimate reality cooking competition where Australian pastry chef competitors fight for the prize of $100,000 and the chance to have their creations featured in Zumbo’s shop. The competitors create beautiful desserts that put your mother's cookies to shame. The best part is the elimination round. The two lowest-scoring Chefs must recreate an incredibly difficult dessert made by Zumbo himself which goes as far as being motorized or levitating. The care and precision each baker put into their desserts, whether it be a beautiful cake or a stunning pastry, makes this a high-stakes competition that’s hard to look away from.

Flavorful Origins

Divided into 20 easy-to-digest episodes, Flavorful Origins is a docudrama that invites viewers inside the coastal Chaoshan province in China. Each 12-minute episode focuses on a single food, covering dishes such as marinated crab, hotpot, seaweed, and hú tì uáng mó ngàn — a type of noodle soup. In each scene, the show follows the culinary journey of one chef as he prepares the dish, from the initial preparation to the final presentation. Unlike American-produced food shows, which often exalt individuals, Flavorful Origins is about food, food, food — the entire process from beginning to end. The show begins with a brief introduction to the ingredient or recipe, followed by a sequence of images depicting chefs stirring, steaming, grilling, chopping, slicing, and sautéing. These visuals are interspersed with scenes showing the same chefs preparing the dish. The show concludes with a few minutes of footage of the finished product being served to guests. Throughout it all, there is no narration; instead, the camera simply captures what happens.

Cooked With Cannabis

With the legalization of cannabis in certain states in the USA and the synergy between marijuana and food, a show that brings these two elements together is bound to be a success! In the competition, each contestant has to create a unique three-course menu and every dish needs to incorporate marijuana in some fashion. This show is loved by stoners and cannabis enthusiasts but also by foodies of all kinds since it opens up a window into what the future could look like once different countries legalize cannabis. The show is creative and is sure to crack you up!

Last Call Food Brawl

Don’t expect the vegan trend to die down anytime soon. Whether your motivation is from a Netflix documentary or the desire to lose weight, people are now more than ever abandoning their carnivorous-eating ways. In fact, a recent survey conducted on 1,000 Americans, yielded that 54% of respondents said that they believed a plant-based diet to be more beneficial to their health than the traditional Western diet. It’s not just about shedding a few pounds or saving the earth. In fact, new research from William Roberts at Mintel show that taste is actually the top reason US adults who eat plant-based proteins do so (52%). The great news about the growing vegan population? More variety. Brands like Daiya and SO Delicious continue to make the switch to a plant-based diet more accessible than it has been in previous years, with plant-based food alternatives. Even brands like Ben & Jerry’s are adding new vegan alternatives to their list of products.

Ugly Delicious

There is something to be admired about a show that presents the different ways cities prepare a popular dish and how one meal can be appreciated by many different cultures. I was skeptical to add Ugly Delicious to my list as I personally find the most annoying. A great concept executed beautifully but one that could use someone with a bit more charm and charisma to carry the show along. However, what it aims to do, is introduce people to different food cultures, it does well - Ugly Delicious makes you hungry and also, makes you think.

Rotten

This six-part docuseries explores the history of human civilization through the lens of food. In each episode, renowned American writer, author, and activist Michael Pollan travels to different parts of the world to learn about local cuisines and discover why certain foods were once considered sacred and others taboo. In the first episode "Cooked", Pollan meets farmers in Morocco to understand how milling wheat with a family farmer changed the way Americans eat bread. He visits a bakery in Mumbai where bakers use ancient techniques to make Indian flatbread called roti and learns why some cultures view fermentation as a form of worship. Then, he heads to a farm in the heart of Italy's wine region to meet winemakers whose families have been growing grapes there since Roman times. While traveling around the globe, Pollan discovers that while people around the world have similar dietary needs, what we choose to eat depends entirely on where we live.