Feast Your Eyes on These 11 Food TV Shows & Movies
Hey, we like food. We also like shutting off our brains and watching TV and movies. Combine these interests and what do you get? Mediocre Chef’s Favourite Food Media. 📺
Keep scrolling for our top recommendations that you should most definitely watch.
The Best Movies About Food
Ratatouille
We’re kicking things off with the OG classic piece of food media that people our age know: Ratatouille. A heartwarming story filled with food, France, and rats. The key message is that “anyone can cook” and that’s something we can get behind here at Mediocre Chef.
Plus, it’s the first time we (and likely anyone watching it) were ever introduced to Ratatouille as a dish.
Give it a watch! (Just try to ignore the inherently unsanitary conditions that come with a rat in a kitchen.)
Ratatouille reminds us of Kogepan, a character we discovered while in Japan in 2023.
Chef
Chef is another classic food movie. Have you ever wanted to rebuild relationships via food? Ever want to make delicious pasta for Scarlett Johansson? Then Chef is the movie for you.
Importantly, Chef features pasta aglio e olio, a dish that is so good that it was one of the first things we wrote about back when Mediocre Chef was still in its infancy. What we’re trying to say is that this one means a lot to us.
Watch on Hulu (USA) | Watch on Netflix (Canada)
The Menu
Want delicious food, but also… a mystery/thriller movie? If that sounds right up your alley, then The Menu is a must-watch.
The premise: a couple ventures to a remote island for an exclusive dining experience at a renowned restaurant. With each lavish dish they encounter shocking surprises that redefine their culinary journey.
The Best Food TV Shows
The Bear
The Bear is one of the best shows that we’ve watched in a long time. Forget about the food aspect, the show itself is worth watching on its own. Then you add in food and we were all in on The Bear.
The acting, the sound design, the writing, the food — it’s all fantastic! Plus everyone’s favorite internet chef, Matty Matheson, has a guest starring role as the loveable handyman. (Check out our blog post where we review his take on lasagna.)
After watching The Bear you’ll be including these phrases in your everyday life, even though you aren’t a chef:
Yes Chef!
Behind
Heard
69 all day, chef! (Kids, go ahead and ask your parents what this one means.)
Cousin
Watch on Hulu (USA) | Watch on Disney+ (Canada)
Shokugeki No Soma (Food Wars)
Okay, so, we’re going to preface this by saying you probably shouldn’t watch this anime with your parents. Or young kids. There’s a lot of fanservice, some tentacles (this one’s for you Kait), and a lot of moaning over how amazing the food is. Clothes also come off sometimes a lot of the time.
That being said, the story is great—it follows a student in culinary school—and the food looks ah-mah-zing. You should watch it (alone).
Baking Impossible
Engineers 🤝 Bakers
That’s it. That sums up the show.
Engineers and bakers work together to build sailboats, robots, mini golf courses, and more! And of course, it must be made of baked goods. We need more “bakineering” in our life! Hopefully Netflix will release another season one day.
Kitchen Nightmares
This one is a guilty pleasure for us. Having a rough day? Why not watch one of the best chefs in the world go in and do a professional take down of awful, unclean, and ridiculous restaurants.
It’s got everything you could ever want from a Gordon Ramsay show: yelling, yelling, uh…more yelling? (And lots of swearing.) But it also has good, solid advice, and usually a heartwarming ending. (Just don’t research how many restaurants featured in Kitchen Nightmares end up lasting in the long run.)
It’s also the show that arguably put Gordon Ramsay into the public consciousness here in North America. (Yes, we know Hell’s Kitchen came first. But let’s be real, it was Kitchen Nightmares. Fight us.)
One time we tried to make Gordon Ramsay’s eggs baked in hash browns. If he had seen our attempt, he would have yelled at us too. 😅
Sidenote: their intern is definitely NOT having a breakdown—the video titles are hilarious.
Hell’s Kitchen
We’re going to hit you with the Gordon Ramsay double feature and also put Hell’s Kitchen on the list. If you wanted more Gordon Ramsay then this is the show for you. If you don’t know the concept then it’s pretty simple: two teams of people compete, head to head, in a professional kitchen for paying customers. After a series of eliminations, someone is crowned the winner and gets the opportunity to become the head chef of a restaurant that Gordon himself picks. 🧑🍳
The Final Table
The premise: teams of two chefs compete to create iconic dishes from 9 different countries. If you like competition shows, you’ll love The Final Table.
This show holds a special place in Brittany’s heart, as it introduced her to Darren MacLean (the only Canadian chef on the show) who owns the restaurant Shokunin in Calgary, Alberta. She found out about the restaurant from watching the show, and she’s so glad she did! The food is SO GOOD. If you love Japanese food, check it out.
The Food Network
Full disclosure: we don’t have cable. But whenever we go on vacation, nothing beats laying on your hotel bed and relaxing with some Food Network on TV.
Our favorite Food Network shows are:
Top Chef — the best of the best
Chopped — we love the creativity that is needed to use all of the basket items
Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives — enough said
Hannibal
If you don’t think about it too hard—how the show is about a cannibal—the food looks delicious. (And Mads Mikkelsen does too. 😉) #ThisIsMyDesign
Sidenote Rant: WTF is this? Hands up if you knew MGM+ was a thing. Why is it not on Peacock, considering it's an NBC show? What??? Also, why is streaming now just like cable? We hate it here, this is the worst.
Our Favorite Food Moments in Movies & Shows That Aren’t About Food
Because sometimes the food just looks really, really good.
Harry Potter — any scene featuring the mouth watering spread in the Great Hall at Hogwarts.
Spirited Away — the scene with Chihiro’s parents eating all of the food at the street stall.
Inglourious Basterds — that scene with the strudel and the whipped cream. 😋
Death Proof - the bar nacho scene.
If you’ve somehow watched all of these TV shows and movies (wow!) and you still need more food videos in your life, check out our list of food YouTube channels you should watch and subscribe to.
What’s your favorite TV show or movie about food? Let us know in the comments below!