Chef's Table Analysis

For my media selection, I chose the Netflix series, Chef’s Table. I like that this series was a bit more documentary styled and gave you a deeper look into the chef’s themselves and it wasn’t just a cooking show or a cook show T.V. game. Although the series is not very long and only consist of two short seasons it really is worth watching. The first episode I watched was on season one and was episode four. This episode focused on a female chef by the name of Niki Nakayama, who owns and operates n/naka, a restaurant located in Los Angeles California. Niki specialized in Kaiseki, but she added her own twist to this Japanese tradition. The second episode I watched was on season two, episode three. This episode focused on a woman chef named Dominique …show more content…
The authors state how “...women must prove they are capable leaders ” (132) and we can see this in Niki Nakayama 's episode of Chef’s Table. Niki Nakayama talks about how in her family women never really make it far in their careers and in her culture women are not chefs. Her father and brother were not very supportive of her dreams to open up her own restaurant and she was constantly being put down by the men around her and in the workplace. She states how she knew she would have to work harder and show people that she is capable of being a chef and can open a successful restaurant. Niki went on to open up her very own restaurant but of course, being a women still dealt with discrimination. Although she did not mention facing any discrimination in her kitchen, she talk about times where customers and or critics have walked out of her restaurant once they learned that it was a female chef who cooked their meal. This alludes to the women managing the kitchen, which is discussed in Taking the Heat, the authors explain how it is common for women’s skills to be questioned and how even when women reach the top, being a chef they still have to prove themselves to be taken seriously (134). In this episode the show demonstrates femininity by exploring who she is as a chef and what her goal is when she is creating her dishes. Niki, while a determined and hardworking chef, does …show more content…
In Taking the Heat the authors state how “men workers reaffirm their legitimacy by emphasizing their differences from other workers through their special knowledge and skills” and how men are featured in food magazines for traveling to find the best ingredients (40). Alex Atala fits these claims almost to a T. In the episode the viewer is taken to the amazon along side Atala as he searches for amazonic ingredients that are like no other ingredients around. The viewer is taken to Brazil where he practices nose-to-tail cooking, killing and skinning a duck for the natives in the town he is in. In these shots he is “covered in blood and butchering whole animals” (40). Time magazine put Atala along with two other renowned chefs, who are males and plastered the title “The Gods of Food” onto the cover and Alex was even featured on a GQ cover riding a motorcycle, it doesn 't get more manlier than that. Here we see how he “...reached a certain level of industry attention…” and how he is being rewarded and celebrated among male chefs (70). The aesthetics, demeanor and how the media and other describe Alex screams masculine, and though he is bold in his masculinity, he also defies some of the standards there are to being a male chef. For example, Atala reveals that he has had a long journey discovering who he is as a person and how is struggled through the