hey guys! what's up? it's Kelly again and welcome back to my channel. Today I'm
going to do a review on a new Netflix documentary series called Ugly Delicious
I rate TV shows and movies on a 1 to 5 scale. One is I wish I could unsee this
Two is I will turn this on for background noise when I'm feeling sad
and lonely. Three is I will watch this but while doing something else like editing
photos or folding clothes. Four is I will watch this but have the potential to get
distracted, and five is I will watch this and badger my friends and family to
watch it too. Which one will I rate Ugly Delicious? Stay tuned to find out! I'm to
the point now where I want to learn from the media I consume. I read historical
fiction and I've grown to love the documentary section of Netflix, and the
fact that this section is so big and growing more and more tells me that I'm
not the only one who's craving more meaningful content so when I stumbled
across Ugly Delicious, I was both confused by the title and intrigued. So I
went for it and ended up watching the entire first season. Ugly Delicious is a
documentary series comprised of eight 50-minute episodes where the host David
Chang takes you on a journey to explore the definition, history, and culture
surrounding specific foods. David Chang is an extremely accomplished chef who
owns over 20 successful restaurants, one of which has been awarded two Michelin
stars every year since 2009. Born to a Korean immigrant parents, Chang has a
strong personality and is almost forceful with his opinions. As the
primary personality in this docu-series, you have to be able to tolerate Chang's
tenacious character in order to enjoy the series. I believe that every
documentary has at least one specific message that it's trying to convey and
while the creator of Ugly Delicious is Morgan Neville, I think that Chang's voice
prevails throughout each episode. Chang believes that food is the ultimate
universal language and thus can help to unify people of all cultures by eating
and enjoying each other's food. He's also desperate to prove that Asian food
should have a better more respected footing on the international
culinary stage which I will get more into later. Each episode follows a
similar format where Chang and a group of his celebrity collaborators will be
eating the food in which that episode is focused, attempt to define that food, and
discuss its history and context in America. Chang will then travel to
different locations both in the US and abroad to showcase the presentation of
the food in both America as well as where the dish has its origin. The shots
are well composed and captivating. The dialogue holds a lot of quality and is
interesting, and there are little nuggets of creativity embedded within every
episode which I really appreciated. For example, the fried chicken episode
has this clever intro that shows from a first-person viewpoint the journey of a
chicken from farm to grocery store to kitchen to plate. There are also these
seemingly spontaneous commercial like bits sprinkled among the episodes that
are sort of enough to throw you off from the rhythm of the episode but at the
same time not curtail your interest in watching. Though I will say that the
intro to the fried rice episode is what my boyfriend would call self
masturbatory. The intro is comprised of these dramatic shots of Chang cooking
while he recites this poetic narrative and then it takes a really weird turn
when he cuts off his thumb and blood is spewing everywhere as the violin music
in the background drastically begins to crescendo. I don't exactly know where
they were going with that.. if it was supposed to be funny or symbolic. I
didn't pick up on it but I liked the quality of the show enough to keep
watching and forgive this failed attempt at whatever it is they were attempting.
Now earlier, I said Chang is desperate to prove Asian food is worthy of more
recognition because in every single episode to include the first episode
featuring pizza there is significant time dedicated to showing the Asian
version of whatever food in which the episode focuses and multiple times when
he's eating food and discussing it with his collaborators, he pushes the idea
that all foods have similarities to Asian food no matter how far-fetched the
similarity appears to be. But as I continued to watch the series, I started
to realize that this show and the dialogue Chang instigates throughout
is ultimately about racism in America told through its food culture. It isn't
so apparent in the first few episodes but the show's theme of exposing racism
really starts to take hold in the third episode where you go to Chang's parents
home and he starts talking a lot about what it was like for him to grow up as a
Korean-American or as he says a "vanilla Korean". From that episode on, I feel like
the show slowly pushes this thesis more and more which climaxes in the six
episode about Fried Chicken but still carries on through the last two episodes.
I can't ignore the fact that I see Chang as the true beneficiary of this
docu-series as its release is conveniently one month after he opened
his first restaurant in LA, but honestly I don't care. This show really opened my
eyes to a new way of looking at the food I eat. There's a lot of talk throughout
the show about when certain foods became popularized, like how Korean barbecue
wasn't mainstream until the 2000s and that the first Vietnamese restaurant
opened in the 80s. This was fascinating to me because I didn't realize that all
of this food culture started to evolve so recently. I had always assumed I just
didn't have exposure to any of it because I grew up in a little town in
central Pennsylvania where there were like eight Pizza restaurants and the
rest were either sandwich shops or home cooking or traditional cuisine. I rate
this show at a solid 5. The format was fast paced enough to keep my attention
and the content was both thought-provoking and educational. I
think this is a show that will resonate with most people because
everyone eats food so everyone can connect with food.
I think Chang is right. Food is the ultimate universal language that we all
speak, but Executive Chef Sean Brock said it best in episode six when he stated,
"Food is the gateway, is the link, is the connecting piece that allows people to
share their realities and perspectives. So hopefully the racism, hopefully that
behavior, changes when there's more knowledge, when there's more compassion...
then there's more empathy there." Thanks for watching guys! If you liked this
review, give it a thumbs up to tell me that I should do another and if you have
anything you want me to review, please put it in the comments.
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can see the videos I post every week. See you next time and go check out Ugly
Delicious on Netflix!