Food is a very personal thing. Whether you’re cooking it or enjoying how someone else envisions a set of ingredients, it is an intimate relationship between your sustenance and, hopefully, the deliciousness a dish can bring.
In the Hulu series Eater’s Guide to the World, Maya Rudolph guides us through a feast of sensory experiences encountering people, cultures and food from around the globe. As we meet the eaters and the food magicians who serve their whims, Rudolph narrates with the invested energy you might get if you crossed Richard Attenborough and your favorite cousin who is always down for an adventure.
Visually arresting shots of the food and its just-as-tasty locations accompany Rudolph’s perfectly vocalized narration, along with a mix of lively sounds, color, and an ASMR lover’s sound bath of food being honored, cooked and eaten.
Each episode is a unique love letter centered around a topic only Eater’s can authentically bring to life. The series, which begins November 11, kicks off with a look at dining alone in the Pacific Northwest, introducing us to quirky characters, like Karen, a food critic from Portland, who eagerly embraces the defiant act of taking the counter spot for one and is, in turn, embraced by the local restaurant scene. Hers is a feast of one we’d love to take over.
The commuting lifestyle in L.A. becomes a central lifeline to established eateries and local guerrilla pop-up chefs driving the food scenes from neighborhood to neighborhood.
Love of nature in Costa Rica amplifies a deep appreciation for scrumptious native fruits influencing chefs and mixologists and indigenous women who cook simple nurturing dishes perfected over the centuries. Watching that episode made this one right here’s mouth water!
In New York City, we see and hear the city never sleeps through the eyes of those who seek post nightlife nourishment. Morocco and its famous city Casablanca allow us into the traditions of cooking by committee.
This series is for serious food lovers who don’t take themselves too seriously, anyone who enjoys the act of eating and loves to learn about the people and cultures that shape the evolution of it. And with your new best friend Maya Rudolph talking you through it, well you want to just dig in.
Now please excuse. I need to go find that taco truck from episode three. Or should I go for that Taiwanese sesame donut in Brooklyn? Hmm, Maya, what do you say?