#*edu

100 Documentaries → 10/100 || A Few Good Pie Places

PRODUCER: Rick Sebak (WQED) YEAR: 2015 WATCH: PBS

OFFICIAL DESCRIPTION: “ There are delicious pies for sale at shops, restaurants, cafes and roadside stands across America. So, in this delicious documentary we celebrate A Few Good Pie Places where people still make flaky crusts and scrumptious fillings.” - PBS

MISSION STATEMENT: “Since I was a small kid, I’ve known how important a bakery can be. There was a bakery across the street from my elementary school, and it was a frequent stop on my way home. And I know many bakeries here in Pittsburgh where I live now, and I’m fascinated by how they become such a valued part of a neighborhood. Nowadays you often see lists of Ten Best Bakeries or even 50 Best Bakeries, but I don’t understand how anyone can make that claim. These bakeries we feature are all really great, but I wouldn’t pretend to know if they’re the best. So I decided we should just call this program 'A Few Great Bakeries' and we’ll hope to convince people to look for more.” - Rick Sebak

MY TAKE: Upfront: this is Sebak’s weakest food documentary, at least of those that are still able to be sourced by the general viewing public at all. That said, it’s perfectly fine for comfort-viewing, and there’s nothing concrete I can point to that’s wrong with it. The inherent conceit of “scrapbook documentary” -- as Sebak, who is credited with the invention of the genre and coinage of the term, calls his works -- is that its through-line relies on fascinating ordinary people, and maybe it’s just that... piemakers are the least fascinating group he’s covered? (Sorry, Ned of Pushing Daisies, you’re different since you’re fictional.)

Perhaps the weakness comes from the distinct lack of voice in the piece, both from Sebak’s editing and those featured. The regionality that Sebak has always sought to highlight, at least in his national PBS programs like this, doesn’t shine the way that it does in “Hot Dog” or “Ice Cream.” And you CANNOT tell me that pie isn’t a historically regional food -- Jan & Michael Stern have built a career on it.

Maybe it’s that for the first time, Sebak’s voice feels forced. I have a loose theory that the “generic” feeling, especially compared to “A Hot Dog Program” (1999) and “An Ice Cream Show” (1996), was borne of the Internet Age. Rather than the delightful sense in the older programs that the featured personalities kind of assumed that everyone’s idea of [insert thing here] was their local version, “A Few Good Pie Places” has no such conceit. Marionberry piemakers in Washington know that no one else has marionberries and Iowa sugar-cream bakers know that no one else has tried a sugar-cream pie. There’s an underlying tone that Sebak, in the editing room, had to trim out all of the SEO Optimized Pitches this time around in a way he didn’t before. Even the tiny independents who Sebak and his crew find in far-flung places from Alaska and Hawai’i to Pennsylvania and California have done the market research.

That’s not to say that anyone comes across unlikable or anything. Far from it. It’s charming and everyone’s very sweet and gracious and damn if I don’t want pie. There’s just a bit of a hollow sense that, just as real scrapbooking has taken a sharp hit as a craft in the age of digital photo albums, scrapbook documentary might be harder to make really sing if the average person is worried about how they’ll come across in a thousand Google results instead of on a single public TV showcase.

(BUT DAMN IF I DON’T WANT PIE NOW.)

RATING:

100 Documentaries → 9/100 || Exploring China: A Culinary Adventure - Episode 2

PRODUCER: BBC YEAR: 2012 WATCH: BBC | DailyMotion

OFFICIAL DESCRIPTION: “Chefs Ken Hom and Ching-He Huang undertake a culinary adventure across China, sampling its food, history, and culture.” - BBC

MY TAKE: [Catch up on Episode 1 + my series overview!]

In this installment, Ching-He Huang and Ken Hom head to Chengdu, further inland and the capital of Sichuan province. Sichuan food is arguably the most well-known form of Chinese food in the Western world, although its introductions and adaptations in America and the UK are very different, which I feel like this particular documentary really glossed over in terms of looking at when/how/why different areas of China have experienced large-scale emigration and ways that the treatment of Chinese immigrants affected the development of American “Chinese food” and British “Chinese food”. (Another documentary on my list, Foods of Chicago, covers this well with regard to America, if you’re curious. It’s why I noticed that this doc didn’t go into it even when Ching-He is talking about adapting the things they’re making or eating in China for the British kitchen.)

Anyhoo, the element of Sichuan cuisine that most makes it unique is the Sichuan peppercorn, or in Britishism the Sichuan flower pepper, which creates the “la” sensation of Sichuan ma la food -- “hot-numb,” or the contrast between hot chilies and the Sichuan peppercorns (which are not actually related to pepper? It’s actually a tiny tiny citrus?) that literally numbs the tongue and lips. It’s thought that it affects the nerves in some mildly neurological way, because it does cause a temporary activation in some nerves that normally are not sensitive to touch (from chewing, for example) or temperature (of the hot food itself). Growing up in the Midwest, where “Schezuan” food has neither actual chilies nor any semblance of ma la, this was super cool to learn about and to see.

As you can see in the gifs, this Westward move for Ching-He and Ken brings more exaggerated, more entrenched gender roles and expectations thereof for Ching-He when they visit the kitchen of a Chengu hotpot restaurant. When they visit a local home, Ken is invited to relax as a guest while Ching-He helps the daughter, mother, aunt, and grandmother to prepare an expansive meal; they separate so that Ken can visit a high-end restaurant kitchen while Ching-He does a second home stay with an organic pig farmer and his wife.

They reconvene just in time to end this installment by visiting Sichuan’s most famous residents... giant pandas! Who are hilarious and cute OF COURSE. But they just eat bamboo, no ma la for them. And no more massive, Westernized cities for Ching-He and Ken, either: episodes three and four bring them much further West into the parts of China that the Western world tends not to acknowledge at all, and where neither of them has cultural literacy...

REC?: Yes. Obviously food issues apply, and a blanket trigger warning for discussions of Mao and the effects of his brutality.

RATING:

100 Documentaries → 8/100 || Foods of Chicago: A Delicious History

PRODUCER: PBS-WTTW YEAR: 2009* WATCH: PBS 

*I swear to everything I believe in that this first aired in 2004, but that’s not what PBS says??? But I VIVIDLY RECALL watching it in 2004. So I think PBS is lying.

OFFICIAL DESCRIPTION: “You are what you eat goes the old saying. So what can we learn about Chicagoans from the food on our plates? WTTW 11's Geoffrey Baer plays both taste-tester and tour guide, exploring the little-known stories behind Chicago's favorite foods.” - PBS

MORE FROM PBS: “How did the Chicago-style hot dog come to be? It became popular during the Great Depression, when various ethnic groups added their favorite veggies to a German sausage with the hopes of getting a cheap, well-balanced meal. Jay's Potato Chips? A snack-food junkie named Al Capone developed a taste for the chips while betting on the ponies in New York, and asked his supplier to start making them for his speakeasies. You probably know… that Italian Beef and Deep Dish Pizza were invented in Chicago (and we'll learn the history of those foods) but did you know that flaming saganaki, the cafeteria, the brownie, and Chicken Vesuvio were also invented here? We'll meet the people who say they can prove it.

Other Highlights Include:

A tour of Chicago's New Maxwell Street Market. It's like a trip to Mexico.

A Native American prepares the type of meal her ancestors might have eaten. Geoffrey tastes the wild onions for which Chicago is likely named.

How corned beef is made.

How the diet of Italian immigrants made them the target of prejudice.

Two legendary German restaurants, the Berghoff and the Chicago Brauhaus remind us of the days when German food was king in Chicago.

Chef Steve Chiappetti shows us how a true Chicago steakhouse makes a steak. (He should know, his family owns Chicago's last slaughterhouse!)

The foods of Polish Noblemen and rural Polish Highlanders. We learn the peasant origins of many popular Polish foods (pierogis, for example), and how Polish-Americans have developed eating traditions all their own.

The 16th Century Muslim empire that had a huge impact on the foods you'll find at Chicago's Indian restaurants.

We get a "cheezborger" and chips ("no fries!") at the Billy Goat, where we learn about the birth of a classic Saturday Night Live routine and the Curse of the Billy Goat.

We discover how people from one tiny region of China, called Toisan, gave us almost all of our favorite Chinese dishes. That's because most of Chicago's Chinese emigrated from that region. We'll also see how the Toisanese altered their food to appeal to American tastes.

And our feast of Chicago food history continues with:

Sushi night at an Italian kosher restaurant.

The birth of the Chicago hot dog, McDonald's, Jay's Potato Chips, and the cafeteria in Chicago.

Soul Food at a West Side church. (We'll learn how African-American cooking still incorporates ingredients from Africa, as well as slave traditions.)

You'll learn the hallmarks of Chicago-style barbecue.

A visit to a pita bread factory to learn about the bread's place in Lebanese culture.

Chef Dudley Nieto gives us a Mexican food tour of Pilsen, where he goes to get ideas for his upscale restaurant.

A visit to an Azteca Foods tortilla factory.

We see the birthplace of the jibarito, a Puerto Rican sandwich made with plantains.

And don't forget dessert: learn how Chicago was once the candy capital of America, visit the Tootsie Roll factory, and see how Chicago's candy industry is changing with the times.”

MY TAKE: This is another one of my “comfort documentaries” -- I’m sure you’re noticing a theme that they’re gentle edutainment about food and nice people having a good time eating things they like, plus some edutainment about American history. That is basically the main thing in this world that gives me comfort.

I also really like Chicago history, and since I’ve been homesick af lately, I decided to rewatch this oldie and weep a bit and indulge in something that unabashedly glorifies Chicago culture. 

I appreciate so much that this doc goes beyond looking at “Chicago food” as deep-dish pizza, hot dogs, Tootsie rolls, and Italian beef. It does mention all of those, OBVIOUSLY, because they are EXCELLENT CHICAGO FOODS with interesting histories attached, but they all come out of the collision of multiple food traditions meeting in one city with one major industry at the time -- meatpacking and stockyards -- and I like that this doc spends more time talking about those different cultures than it does about the ~all-American results.

I also really, really like that it starts with the Algonquin and Miami-Illinois people and their food traditions, since they’re who gave Chicago its name (shikaakwa, for the ramps that grow in the area in Spring). I like that it gives equal time and weight to all of the ethnic and racial groups mentioned, because I feel like that was a conscientious and ethical choice by Geoffrey Baer (et al) that adds a lot of dimension to the narrative of “this is Chicago, and this is where our foods come from,” and it isn’t a choice that I’ve seen a lot of documentary-lite filmmakers make. I also appreciate that in addition to visiting a great Chicago restaurant for each type of cuisine, they also share a meal in someone’s home, and their actual life story becomes woven into the narrative about their food, because that’s just... how food works, in my opinion, and what makes food culture so interesting to me. 

(Rambles for 27 hours about how if you really want to know about a person or character or culture or society, know what/how they eat and waxes poetic about good food-writing and historiography).

It’s also a general point of pride for me that I’ve been to all of the restaurants mentioned except the Billy Goat, and that’s because I don’t want to go there until I can pronounce that last name and get the prize. I’m almost there.

Anyway, I don’t have anything super deep, per se, to say about this one, I just really like it and think it’s very charming.

REC?: Yes. Obviously food issues apply, and there are mentions of India’s caste system and discussions of xenophobia. There are also some gratuitous shots of raw meat and meat curing, so if that squicks you then prepare to fast-forward that part (I always do).

RATING: 

100 Documentaries → 7/100 || Exploring China: A Culinary Adventure - Episode 1

PRODUCER: BBC YEAR: 2012 WATCH: BBC | DailyMotion

OFFICIAL DESCRIPTION: “Chefs Ken Hom and Ching-He Huang undertake a culinary adventure across China, sampling its food, history, and culture.” - BBC

MY TAKE: This is a 4-part documentary, and I’m treating each part as a separate documentary because they differ so much and have very unique arcs, which is part of what I like so much about this miniseries.

"Exploring China: A Culinary Adventure” is one of those documentaries that Dean Pelton rails about at Abed in the Community episode where they make a Greendale commercial -- “WHY ISN’T THE THING YOU’RE MAKING A DOCUMENTARY ABOUT EVER THE THING THE DOCUMENTARY ENDS UP BEING ABOUT?” (paraphrasing bc I’m not looking up the quote right now).

Ostensibly, Exploring China: A Culinary Adventure is about, well, exploring China through food, moving across the massive country from East to West, starting in Beijing and ending on the Tajikstan border. Like, first off, carte blanche, as a white Westerner, I was amazed by how... un-China-like so much of China really is, and I think I really needed to see that. I mean, it’s huge! And somehow even though I knew facts about how many minorities and dialects and regions there are in China, I never pictured them as distinct as they are, and I’m really glad to have been able to see it and correct that in my thinking and I’m impressed that a Western documentary like, went there and showed it.

But that’s not even what the “real story” of the documentary is -- although it’s part of it.

The “real story” is, I think, multilayered, which I really, really love. There’s the obvious layer of the effects of the cultural revolution and IMMENSE inequality across China as you move Westward and away from Beijing. I love that in each hour-long episode, they go both to a city center and to a rural home within a few hours’ drive, and I love that it doesn’t ever feel like “tragedy porn” because they aren’t showing paucity or trying to be pitying -- everywhere they go, there is food and there is pride and there is a distinct sense of self and place. In Part I, Ching-He Huang goes to a pork farmer’s home in Chuandixia, an almost-abandoned town 400 miles West of Beijing, to see his organic operations and cook with his wife [EDIT: Sorry, the pork farmer is in Episode 2 -- this one is an innkeeper and his wife].

Yes: it is important to specify that she cooks with his wife, because another layer of the documentary -- and one that I naturally think is particularly interesting and important -- is, frankly, the devolution of Ching-He as they move further and further West over the month of their trip and she is treated worse and worse by the men in places they visit, especially compared to her older, male co-host. There’s another documentary about gender roles and the status of women in China that I’ve wanted to see FOR YEARS and still can’t track down (”Spilled Water”), and the clips and interviews I’ve heard from that piece really came back to me as I watched through this.

In Beijing, Ken and Ching-He are invited to cook in the white-coat, very Westernized kitchen at a high-end restaurant, and like... the looks on the faces of the employees (all men) as they watch Ching-He cook in their kitchen signal the entire force of this arc beginning. But, since she is a Chinese woman who was trained in England and works in England, you can see on her face right back that she knows those looks and how to ignore them.

(Spoiler alert: that changes as it gets more blatant, personal, and less Westernized-sexism(?) as they go. It ends fascinatingly in Episode 4.)

But that also introduces, or quietly underscores, the third arc, which gets a lot of airtime in this episode in particular, and that is that both Ken and Ching-He come from families displaced by the Communist regime and who are making their first real, extended trips back to China as adults with this series. As someone who is not an immigrant or the child of immigrants, that experience is one that I do not share, but it’s one that I think is vitally important to be able to, like, in the parlance that we used in my MFA program, empathetically imagine -- as in, not like “oh I can imagine that experience,” but like, “I need to be able to create a frame of reference outside of my own privilege and assumptions so that I can understand the dimensional fullness of that status and how it affects all other experiences for that person.”

I think I’ve said it before, but I like best when documentaries force me to do that so that I can appreciate them the right way. So this series gets an A+ from me, although I do think there are a few scenes (particularly in Episode 3, when I get there post-wise) that exist in part to shock or ~gross out Western audiences.

Or I might just be particularly squeamish about bugs, which is definitely a true thing, so ymmv.

REC?: Yes. Obviously food issues apply, and a blanket trigger warning for discussions of Mao and the effects of his brutality.

RATING: