Chef's Table

I stumbled upon The Chef's Table when I was browsing through Netflix. I've watched 4 episodes so far. As much as I loved it, I couldn't do and didn't want to do my usual binge-watching. These episodes are done so well, they tell such beautiful stories about how each artist came to be and how they developed their culinary skills and passions - each episode deserved to be savored like a meal, slowly, and one at a time.

My favorite episodes were Season 1, episodes 1 and 4, Season 2, episode 1.

The best thing I got out of these episodes is all of these chefs who didn't just work towards being a functional chef, but worked towards being great. And that seemed to come from the effort of understanding what their own personal passion and their own personal style evoked in terms of artistry. They seemed to share the passion of having people understand who they are through their artistry with food.

In acting, it seems a little different because we're already representing ourselves. Our palate is not a plate or a potato - it is our body, our face, our actual being. Still, I think so much is represented with how we live our lives and what kinds of things we fill our heads, hearts and souls with...

There was an episode - not the ones I highlighted - where they talked about working with farmers to create new types of food by feeding livestock things like red peppers so that you'd have a red pepper flecked yolk in the eggs that chicken would lay. What we put inside invariably comes out.

So we develop ourselves as artists by our influences. That sounds trite - it's self explanatory - but what if we looked at it in layers and go all the way to how we speak about people, ourselves, how we handle conflict - and that plays out in our artistry?