A Chef’s Life
[click here to watch it] It is a PBS show.
[My Review--This is a great show for me, my favorite show. I love cooking using local ingredients and I always wanted to know what it's like to run a restaurant. That's what it's about and more. It feels very homey, even the theme song. You see the pressure between husband and wife being business partners. So it's a reality show too without the BS and ego. The chef Vivian is a real working mom with 4 year old twins. I especially like when Vivian goes to the local farms and fisheries. You do learn about cooking and presentation too.]
What follows is from the website:
A Chef's Life is a half-hour character-driven documentary and cooking series that takes viewers inside the life of Chef Vivian Howard, who, with her husband Ben Knight, left the big city to open a fine dining restaurant in small-town Eastern North Carolina.
Each episode follows Vivian out of the kitchen and into cornfields, strawberry patches and hog farms as she hunts down the ingredients that inspire her seasonal menus. Using a chef’s modern sensibilities, Vivian explores Southern cuisine, past and present — one ingredient at a time. A celebration of true farm to table food, the 13-week series combines the action and drama of a high-pressure business with the joys and stresses of family life.
About the Show
Vivian Howard originally made a name for herself in the Manhattan restaurant world and with her own gourmet delivery service. Acclaim and potential investors poured in, but it was the offer from her own parents that called to her the loudest. They would help her build a restaurant — but with one catch. She had to open it back home in Eastern North Carolina, a place to which she swore she would never return.
And so The Chef & the Farmer, located in Kinston, North Carolina, was born. Six years in, Vivian and her restaurant have won numerous accolades, including her selection as a James Beard semi-finalist, but the challenges continue. As the series opens, Vivian and Ben are juggling the restaurant, raising twins and anxiously building their own home — right next door to her parents.