Netflix Series to Watch with Your Lunch!
Besides rewatching Friends for 1000th times, or Brooklyn 99 or Modern Family, lately i also watch several Netflix originals that accidentally have similar theme : Food!
It kinda different with what my colleagues watch, that's around K-Drama, so famous in Netflix nowadays like Crash Landing On You (CLOY) or Hospital Playlist.
It's not that i hate K-drama, it's just that what's popular now is not the genre i need to watch in the moment. In other words, i can not afford the emotional burden watching life problems stretched by dozens of episodes in K-Drama, it's too much for me in this quarantine mode.
There comes the Food series available on Netflix. Wait, does this series recommendation is like a cooking show filled with unrealistic recipes? Because I mentioned above that I kinda avoid drama..
Well not really, this series have the slice of life stories too, but it's more like short one, every episode offer different problems and faster resolutions so I'm not too troubled, and most importantly it all revolves around tasty food that will make me happy and hungry at the same time :)
1. Food Wars! : Shokugeki no Soma
This anime is my 1st recommendation. I found it through twitter one day and directly watched it on Netflix. It's about an average boy, called Soma, who challenged his life by joining a top-culinary-high school, not knowing that his dad was an alumni of the same school and one of their top student. So this series talk about his journey being undermined as no-one, an outsider, and unskilled just because he is not the son of culinary industrial owner, and does not come from a wealthy family.
The journey of Soma, to be acknowledge as a skillful chef is interesting. Its rich with life lesson and encouragement to overcome life hurdle and motivate us to work even harder to achieve our goals. This is very common message coming from anime i know, but just imagine you can also have a visual of a very delicious meal, different in each episodes, well you don't have to imagine it, just go watch it :) Every episode duration is only about 20-30 minutes, so it will not consume too much of your time.
Some food in the series 🤤
2. Midnight Dinner : Tokyo Stories
It caught my eyes one day and i got curious and started to watch it.
Its story starts in midnight diner, open everyday at 12 am - 7 am, and managed by a kinda old man who is usually called 'Master' by his customer. The unique selling point of his diner is, he only has 3 main menu, but customer actually can order anything and the Master will cook it as long as he has the ingredients. Sometimes, customer can also bought the ingredients and ask Master to cook it. It consist of 5 season, each season has 10 episodes, with duration around 20-30 minutes.
What makes it one of the best Netflix Series for me is its diverse stories. Its story is mainly about the diner customers (lots of them) and all of them connected to the food that they enjoy in the diner. The customer types of this diner can be differentiate by their visit frequency, some of them are regular and others are a common customer. The regular customer are very diverse, couple of them is a middle class workers, a freelance photographer, a Yakuza member, a gay bar owner, police, strippers, to the food critics :)
Sometimes, the story will tell about the regular customer journey and their problems, but other times it's about the life of a common Japanese that enjoy the diner's food with some memories to be told.
The series highlight how people can freely interact and share part of their life with strangers in the diner. May be they are so open like that because it's already midnight and just exhausted. And how the customers can talk freely to the Master and then he just drop the truth bombs right then and there and it will kinda make his customer got on the right track again.
Another things I love from this series is how they always make the production better. At the earlier episodes, you will feel that the conversation lines is cringy, too formal, not really a suitable reaction, but it will improve accordingly I promise you, just keep watching :) Even their intro and ending scene is greater too as the time going.
I also really love their Lo-Fi and sometimes jazzy soundtracks, i can not find it all on spotify or youtube. So please share it with me if you find the original soundtrack..
3. Samurai Gourmet
I'm currently watching it, and got to couple first episodes. Surprisingly it only has 1 season with 12 episodes. It's kinda bizarre one actually. It's about a man who is just complete his tenure and enjoy a pension life.
It's kinda struck him that he really doesn't know what to do, no more routine going to work etc, so he decide to kinda enjoy the food around the neighborhood. The bizarre thing is that every time he enjoy food, he got into situation that makes him fantasize a Samurai doing what samurai do if he got into the kinda situation like him at the time. I feel it bizarre because i'm just feel afraid it's some kind of illness that the old man having, due to the stress of losing his years of working routine, something like schizophrenia maybe. So i kinda have a mix feeling about this haha
But still, the food looks delicious and i plan to keep watching it to the end, hoping that may be there's another points this show has to offer.
If you are unlike me and think that you still need the drama, but longing to see delicious food too, i actually have another recommendation that will suit you.
Bonus : Let's Eat
It's a Korean series, consists of 3 seasons, around 14-18 episodes each season. It will provides you a good drama and also a heavenly delicious food around Korea. I watched the first season and couples of early 2nd season, and it really exceeds my expectation. I don't continue it for a while because i just don't feel like it. But of course i will continue it someday after quarantine :)
That's all my recommendation, hope you will watch it too and share the experince.
And if you have any other recommendations for the series Food related, please share it too, i will love to check them out 🤩