One of television’s best cooking shows doesn’t involve weekly eliminations or recipe tutorials.
The intimate, beautifully produced “A Chef’s Life,” airing at 1 p.m. Saturdays on WTTW-Channel 11, is an engrossing docuseries that should be a staple on every foodie’s DVR menu.
Now in its second season, the PBS program follows the lives of Vivian Howard, chef and mother of young twins, and her husband, Chicago native and artist Ben Knight, as they run a farm-to-table restaurant in Vivian’s eastern North Carolina hometown.
More than just a celebration of Southern cuisine — something the show does exceptionally well — the cameras capture an authentic, honest look not only at the ups and downs of being a chef but of marriage, too.
Saturday’s episode is the first of an emotional two-parter that finds Vivian in the proverbial pressure cooker.
With the help of Ben and Chicago chef Jason Vincent (formerly of Nightwood), Vivian travels to Mississippi to serve some 400 food writers and Southern cooking fans a deeply personal four-course menu that includes the risky dish Tom Thumb, a rich sausage stuffed into a pig’s appendix.
You know that old saying about two things man should never see being made: laws and sausages? That guy never saw “A Chef’s Life.”
Rating: [s3r star=3.5/4]
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