Ugly Delicious

Click here for a video version of this review: https://youtu.be/PUYbHxhzh-c

Ugly Delicious is a Netflix series with chef Dave Chang traveling the world, sampling food, and discussing its origins. There are now two seasons on the platform.

The show has a number of great scenes throughout it like when he was making dumplings with the rural grannies in China or where he has some chicken in Japan and there is this great personal moment where Chang was moved enough to hug the chef and they both ended up in tears. It was such a great and genuine moment. I also really enjoyed the Home Cooking episode where Dave goes home to have Thanksgiving with his family, and also the BBQ episode.

Those nice moments and the excellent look and style of it are about the only things I enjoyed about it though. The show starts with the premise of talking about how not every meal has to be a 10 Michelin Star piece of art, but how often simple, straightforward food tastes amazing and has a lot more heart and meaning to it. As the show goes along it becomes more apparent that it’s less a food travel show and more of a socio-political commentary that uses food as the source of its observations.

And I’d be okay with that, if it was consistent in its messaging and less openly biased. It felt like they couldn't get through an episode without having a "...but white people" moment or some overt political statement about how white people ruin everything. Chang shits a lot on white people and implies they can't understand food from other cultures but then quite happily uses a white British lady - who speaks fluent Chinese - to guide him in the China episodes. This then leads to a scene in the Fried Rice episode of Season 1 where Chang literally spits some food out in front of the host, chef, and staff who put a banquet in front of him. Kind of ironic when not long before he says something like "You need to dumb down real Chinese food for white palates".

It’s also peppered through...