Tuesday, March 07, 2017

Chef's Table: Enrique Olvera


Finally, we started watching the last 3 episodes of the Netflix series "Chef's Table." The first one we watched is about Enrique Olvera, a Mexican chef using many traditional ingredients and recipes in a high-level restaurant. As do most episodes of Chef's Table, this one includes very pretentious comments by restaurant reviewers, interviews with the chef himself, kitchen scenes, artsy pictures of the restaurant's featured dishes, lots of loud classical music, and many beautiful scenes from the surrounding territory. Also, it highlights the most exotic of the ingredients and methods, such as the dish above made with seasonal ants, which only creep out and offer delicious flavor for a few days each year.


Olvera is shown on visits to several sites in and near Oxaca, including corn fields like the one above. He uses corn in many dishes, including desserts, as obviously it's central to Mexican foodways.



One featured dish at his restaurant is a very complex version of mole, the sauce made from a combination of ingredients from Mexico and the entire world -- New-World chocolate, nuts, Old-World spices, etc. He serves it with tortillas that are made by hand in the restaurant.

Unlike several of the featured chefs in this series, Olvera seemed to me to cook really appealing dishes, which I think I would love to taste. Although I loved the recent parody of the series (which I posted here) I still enjoyed watching.

8 comments:

Jeanie said...

That's a really good series! Nice post! (Takes awhile to catch up, doesn't it?!)

Kitchen Riffs said...

I haven't heard of this series. But we watch little TV. Watched the link to the parody -- really funny. :-)

The Candid Cover said...

This is one series that I still have to watch on Netflix and it sounds really interesting. The scenery looks beautiful from the images in your post and the whole concept is intriguing to me. Thanks for sharing this! :)

Beth F said...

I so behind on this series! Nice recap.

Jackie McGuinness said...

I haven't heard about this either, so I will search it out. We are currently in Mexico and I get better every year with the food.

jama said...

A dish made with ants? Not familiar with this series but it sounds interesting.

Claudia said...

I'm trying to imagine what the ants taste like. Spike maybe?

nishitak said...

I have never heard of this series. Sounds good!