When we travel, we want to experience the culture, and if we’re foodies, then we can’t wait to try new restaurants. Food is definitely at the top of our list and we plan for months beforehand, figuring out where we’re going to eat each meal. Thankfully for all foodies, Netflix’s reality series, Chef’s Table, allows viewers to travel all over the world and learn about brilliant chefs and the restaurants and meals that they’ve dreamed up.
There are six seasons of the show, which started streaming in April 2015. It’s impossible to watch this show and not get hungry… and not want to immediately visit all of these places. Here are 10 restaurants on our bucket list from the fascinating Netflix TV series Chef’s Table.
Osteria Francescana
We would love to go to Massimo Bottura’s restaurant in Modena, Italy. The place has three Michelin stars and has incredibly creative dishes that this quirky, sweet chef dreams up.
His menu items have really fun names, like “Rice as if it were a Bouillabaisse” and “This little piggy went to the market.” His Chef’s Table episode features him talking a lot about cheese and waxing poetic, and the way that he talks about food is so inspiring.
Husk
Sean Brock and his Southern restaurant, Husk, are the focus of a sixth season episode of Chef’s Table. This is a pretty emotional episode as he talks about his illness, myasthenia gravis. It was a big moment for him and he realized that he had to stress less and focus more on life outside of the restaurant kitchen.
Husk has locations in Charleston, Savannah, Nashville, and Greenville. The menu is super seasonal and always different, but a sample on the website features southern fried catfish with speckled butter beans, pot likker, heirloom kale, and roasted cabbage and onion. Sounds delicious.
Osteria Mozza And Pizzeria Mozza
Nancy Silverton is in a third season episode of Chef’s Table and her culinary story is beautiful. She began as a pastry chef for Wolfgang Puck’s restaurant Spago in L.A. and then opened her own bakery, La Brea Bakery.
Now she runs Osteria Mozza and Pizzeria Mozza, and we would love to go to both of these amazing restaurants. There’s a mozzarella bar, which is enough to make run there right now, which features dishes like burrata and bacon (with caramelized shallots and marinated escarole) and burrata and peach. This is the place to go for beautiful, interesting Italian food.
Milk Bar
The fifth edition of Chef’s Table is all about pastry chefs, and this cool, fun episode features Christina Tosi, who created Milk Bar, which has locations in New York, Toronto, L.A., Boston, Washington, and Las Vegas. From an early age, Tosi has been interested in baking, and watching the amazing creations in this episode is enough to make us want to jump off the couch and head to the nearest location.
Milk Bar has menu items like Confetti Cookies, Corn Cookies, Cereal Milk Soft Serve, and Milk Bar Pie. We’re already hungry… Tosi is so creative and has a childlike enthusiasm for junk food, and this place is on our list for sure.
South Philly Barbacoa
This restaurant is located in Philidelphia and run by Cristina Martinez, a chef who became passionate about both food and immigration after she was undocumented.
The food looks incredible, and of course, as the name suggests, they specialize in barbacoa, plus tacos. Everyone loves tacos, and Martinez’s are an art form on their own.
Atelier Crenn
This San Francisco-based restaurant is run by Dominique Crenn, who approaches food like an art form that she has said is “poetic culinaria.”
As the website explains, “Each guest is greeted with a poem, each line symbolizing a presentation in the meal. The menu is focused on seafood and vegetables, drawing from the memories of her mother’s garden in Brittany through the lens of California product and produce.” How could this not be on our list?!
Pujol
Enrique Olvera is in the second season of Chef’s Table, and viewers get the chance to see his restaurant Pujol, which is in Mexico City. This restaurant is definitely on our bucket list. As the website says, Enrique Olvera opened his restaurant in 2000 and “His cooking is always changing; it draws ideas from everywhere, always reinterpreting and evolving, but with the roots in Mexican ingredients and techniques of all times.”
The menu is a fascinating, delicious take on Mexican food, serving up dishes such as ceviche, a corn cake with cacao and vanilla, and striped bass with kosho, fava bean and mole verde.
n/naka
Niki Nakayama, a Japanese-American chef, opened up n/naka in L.A. in 2011. The restaurant is Michelin-starred, and after watching the first season episode featuring this culinary artist, anyone would be booking a ticket to L.A. immediately.
The restaurant features tasting menus and the Modern Kaiseki menu has 13 courses for $225-275. The sample menu on the website has a dish called Shiizakana which is spaghettini, abalone, pickled cod roe, and burgundy truffles. There’s a note on the dish that says “not bound by tradition, the chef’s choice dish.” That sums up the amazingly talented Nakayama, who is doing things her own way and is a true artist.
Alinea
Alinea is one of the most famous restaurants in the world, and definitely for good reason: chef Grant Achatz has created a magical culinary experience unlike nothing else. Of all the restaurants on our bucket lists, we couldn’t not mention this one.
Achatz’s Chef Table episode is a beautifully crafted, moving story about his ambitions and his struggles with tongue cancer. Much of the episode talks about how he was a chef who could no longer taste the very food that he was cooking and dreaming up. We would love to travel to Chicago and go to Alinea. When you’re about to make a reservation, the website says “book your experience” which is a sign that this is totally unique. The experience won’t be cheap, as the lowest one is $210, but it’s so worth it. The Chef’s Table episode featured making sugar into balloons that you can eat, which would be so awesome to see in person.
Blue Hill
Dan Barber is well-known for his New York City restaurant, Blue Hill, and his Blue Hill at Stone Barns in NY state. He also appears in the first season of Chef’s Table, and we absolutely have to try Blue Hill sometime.
Like Alinea, the menu here is not simply a collection of dishes but an experience. You can choose from a Daily Menu, which is $95, or the Farmer’s Feast for $108. The latter features “Last Chance Sweet Corn” and “Finger Lake Grapes” with “young ginger and blue hill farm milk.” The food is farm-to-table fare and focused on fresh, quality ingredients.
