Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Flavorful Origins: Chaoshan Cuisine’ On Netflix, About The Dishes From A Region Of China Most Americans Have Never Heard Of

Even to people who know that most of what Americans know as “Chinese food” are actually dishes created in America. Even people who eat authentic Cantonese cuisine have no idea what the food of other regions of China is like. Flavorful Origins gives audiences an idea of how different regions of the massive country work with their ingredients. In the first season, the show concentrates on the Chaoshan region in the southeast. Read on for more info…

FLAVORFUL ORIGINS: CHAOSHAN CUISINE: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: Close-up shots of olives; black olives, white olives, spinning on a table, sliced in half through its pit, the texture of the flesh inside shown in detail.

The Gist: The Chaoshan region in southeast China, the eastern part of the Guangdong province. The cuisine of that region is mainly vegetarian and seafood-based and known for fresh flavors that aren’t obscured by heavy seasonings. Many dishes are braised, poached, steamed or stir-fried. But for the most part, Chaoshan (aka Teochew) cuisine is revered by foodies for letting the flavors of its vegetables, fruits and proteins shine.

The producers of Flavorful Origins make sure the viewer understands how revered the ingredients that come from the region are via lingering closeups of the food and dishes that each episode focuses on. For olives, we see lots of food porn shots of flesh and pits, and flowery descriptions on how one type of olive tastes bitter at first then turns sweet as it’s dissolved by the enzymes in the mouth. For rice noodles known as Hu Tieu, we see luscious shots of rice milk, closeups of noodles being cut from steamed sheets of that rice milk (with accompanying squishy sound effects). In the hot pot episode, we see pieces of marbled beef dipped into broth from the side of a clear pot.

There are no interviews, though people who have been making this food for decades are featured plying their trade. Because of this, each episode is approximately 15 minutes long, just short enough to let you binge, get hungry, and book that trip to Chaoshan, when you had no idea where it was before turning on the first episode.

Our Take: Food shows take a lot of time and effort to make their visuals compelling, because no matter how flowery the language of the narration is, audiences can’t taste the food. The best way to make the dishes the shows profile appealing is to make it look as appealing as possible. Flavorful Origins has the “food porn” thing down. Slow-motion close-ups. Long shots that show details in a food’s texture. Lusciously-shot scenes of people cooking the ingredient into tasty dishes. If you’re at all a fan of southeast Asian cuisines, this show will be one that you binge, then get you hungry.

The narration, translated from Mandarin, is a bit flowery and clumsy. At times it can add to the viewing experience, but for the most part, this show’s producers let the food do the talking via visuals and subtle sound effects that convey things like boiling water, cutting through the squishy fat and tough sinew between cuts of beef, the stickiness of the rice milk sheets that are used to make noodles. It makes the entire package very appetizing.

Sex and Skin: We see things like dead, plucked geese dunked into boiling water to make broth, but that’s all the skin we see. Can we consider food porn a form of sex?

Parting Shot: Shots of olives; olives on trees, olives being mixed in oil, etc.

Sleeper Star: Basically, someone in the cast who is not the top-billed star who shows great promise.

Most Pilot-y Line: Speaking of the narration, this line is eyeroll-inducing: “One olive, transcending a thousand years, with people continuously developing and enriching its flavors.”

Our Call: STREAM IT. If you watch Flavorful Origins while hungry, be sure you have Postmates installed on your phone. You’re going to need it.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, VanityFair.com, Playboy.com, Fast Company’s Co.Create and elsewhere.

Stream Flavorful Origins on Netflix