‘Chef’s Table: Pastry’ Is The Sweetest Entry Into Netflix’s Foodie Doc Saga

Chef’s Table: Pastry serves up viewers a sumptuous look at the sweetest part of any feast: the dessert. This latest volume of Chef’s Table takes us away from the upscale world of Michelin star-rated restaurants and to the geniuses revolutionizing the way we eat dessert. The four-episode season introduces us to Christina Tosi (of New York City’s Milk Bar), Corrado Assenza (of Sicily’s Caffé Ficilia), Jordi Roca (of Girona’s El Celler de Can Roca), and Will Goldfarb (who makes his treats in Indonesia’s Room4Dessert).

Chef’s Table famously protests that it’s not “food porn,” but this latest season once more disproves that notion. The best part of any episode of Chef’s Table: Pastry isn’t the heartfelt confessionals to camera, but the super sensual close ups of candy-coated desserts. It’s sensory overload and you’re bound to be seduced by the sweetness paraded upon the screen. If you can get through an episode without wandering to the kitchen for a cookie or feverishly googling your latest patisserie, then you may not actually be human.

At first glance, the only real thing that distinguishes this latest volume of Netflix’s foodie doc hit is that we’re focusing on desserts and sweets. But there are seismic differences lurking quietly under the surface. One thematic difference in Top Chef: Pastry seems to be this season’s greater emphasis on the importance of tradition. We see the subjects discuss the importance of keeping them, breaking them, and carrying them on for future generations.

There is also, naturally, a greater emphasis on family. In the first three episodes at least, each chef seems massively influenced by the presence of their family. It’s not an emotional influence as you see with other chefs, but a real creative one. Tosi thought of baking as something the women in her family did, Assenza inherited the family café, and Roca is famously the third brother in an illustrious family of chefs who run one of the world’s most lauded restaurants. Goldfarb’s episode is less about this and more about what molded him into a iconoclastic pastry chef. In many ways, the show suggests that he may be the unwitting father of the creative movement that Tosi and Roca are now at the vanguard of.

The romance of the restaurant chef is that he or she is the general of the kitchen. Previous chefs we’ve met are treated as auteurs. These pastry chefs are creative geniuses, too, but so much of their art is informed by community and bringing delight to the people around them. Instead of following these chefs as they strut solo through their day, we see far more scenes of collaboration. The suggestion seems to be that pastry is less about perfection than it is about pleasure. And the greatest joy comes from friendship and family.

As a show, Chef’s Table is as delicious as ever, but I would be remiss if I didn’t also note that the format is also getting a wee bit stale. In particular, the energy and excitement of Christina Tosi’s baking is almost giving short shrift by the trademark upscale Chef’s Table treatment. It’s not that her glorious stacked cakes and inventive delights don’t deserve the same level of respect as Massimo Bottura’s inventive tortellini or Grant Achatz’s modernist cuisine. It’s that presenting them accompanied by the same old austere classical music arrangements we’ve heard before kind of sucks the fun out of what cereal milk ice cream is. A few stand out episodes from last season – the Ivan Orkin and Jeong Kwan ones in particular — suggested that producers Brian McGinn and David Gelb might be considering remixing their tried and true format. Sadly, Chef’s Table: Pastry seems like a missed opportunity to do this.

Nevertheless, Chef’s Table continues to deliver the most deliriously delicious footage for rabid foodie doc fans. Chef’s Table‘s production values, most notably its cinematography and editing, continue to blow other food shows away. At the end of the day, if you’re looking for a sweet and sumptuous food docu-series to carry you away from the stress of the day-to-day, you can do no better than Chef’s Table: Pastry. It’s blissful and beautiful, just like the best dessert you ever scarfed down.

[One note: Even though Netflix has been promoting Chef’s Table: Pastry as a spin-off series akin to Chef’s Table: France, it is actually filed as the original show’s fourth volume.]

Stream Chef's Table: Pastry on Netflix