These Five Women-Led Food Travel Shows Are A Far Cry From Julia Child To Inspire You In The Kitchen and Booking Your Next Journey
by Heather Cassell
Thanksgiving. It is an American holiday celebrated by stuffing ourselves traditionally with too much turkey, stuffing, green bean casserole, mashed potatoes, and pumpkin pie around the table with family and friends.
However, this Thanksgiving, I have been quarantined. Covid struck me just as the holiday week began. So, I’m curled up in bed with my remote control stuffing myself with women-led food travel shows. It’s been the perfect way to get into the holiday mood and dream of where Girls That Roam might go in 2024.
In the past couple of years, several women-led food travel shows have streamed across our screens. Not only are women pushing the pan working with new ingredients, asking hard questions, and taking on physical challenges they represent American women today. The hosts are going out of their and viewers’ comfort zones and bringing us back reminding us of our shared experiences of struggle, community, and rediscovering, reimagining, and rebuilding our lives and culture in the United States and around the world. The best thing is that we are rediscovering, preserving, sharing, and blending the flavors of where we came from in the places where we landed on our own terms more than at any time in history.
It appears it’s just the beginning of a new food travel show revolution and I’m hungry for more. Here are Girls That Roam’s favorite top five women-led food travel shows to inspire you this holiday season and into 2024:
1. Taste the Nation
In May, Padma Lakshmi’s much anticipated third season of “Taste the Nation” returned to Hulu. This season, Padma dove deep into Afghan refugee, Arab, Cambodian, Filipino, Ukrainian and other communities with complicated and traumatic journeys to becoming American. In 10 episodes, the Indian-American author, actress, model, and former Bravo “Top Chef” host did not shy away from difficult questions and hard issues of colonialism, war, racism, and the challenges and opportunities taking root in America. Along the way, she learns about amazing stories and tastes amazing food holding cultures together and bridging American and ethnic identities creating a modern America.
2. Searching for Mexico
Texican actress, producer, and director Eva Longoria takes viewers on a tour of Mexico’s 31 states starting with her second home Mexico’s capital, Mexico City, which is a separate entity from the states, in CNN’s “Searching for Mexico.” The first season, launched in March, Eva takes viewers through the crowded streets of Mexico City’s buzzing eateries to the country’s foodie hotspots – Mexico City, Oaxaca, Yucatan, Jalisco, and Veracruz – and beyond in six episodes. Mexico’s story is an Americas story. Since the Spanish conquest in 1519 and the 300 years of Spanish rule and other waves of immigration came new animals, crops, and styles of food connecting people to their heritage. Those flavors and products eventually sparked creativity with chefs mingling the indigenous people’s culinary heritages together along with celebrating ancestral gastronomic gems.
3. Searching for Soul Food
Los Angeles queer Black celebrity chef and restauranteur Alisa Reynolds, hit the road with her mostly Black production crew searching for the “soul” in cuisines across the globe in “Searching for Soul Food” on Hulu. Alisa, who owns soul food restaurant, My 2 Cents, puts the hip and hop to the dinner table in Appalachia, Jamaica, Italy, Mississippi, Peru, and other destinations, including her hometown, Los Angeles making connections one savory bite at a time. She isn’t afraid to tell it straight up about the history of some beloved dishes born out of struggle and innovation in enslavement, dire poverty, and war and resistance that nourished and brought people together for centuries.
For the supreme foodie adventure Bravo’s crowned lesbian “Top Chefs” Melissa King, who is a “Top Chef All Star,” and Kristen Kish venture out into the wilds to the furthest reaches of the world for the most extreme culinary experiences for National Geographic.
4. Restaurants at the End of the World
Kristen travels to destination restaurants in the most remote locations in the world in in four episodes of “Restaurants at the End of the World” on Hulu. She journey’s to Isfjord Radio Adventure Hotel in the High Arctic on the second longest fjord in the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard, Norway. Ventures to Turner Farm on North Haven Island in the middle of Penobscot Bay, one of Maine’s 14 unbridged year-round isle communities. She also navigates a minimalist kitchen without an oven on top of a mountain in a cloud forest at Hacienda Mamecillo Restaurant in Boquete, Panama to cooking on a boat in the middle of the water at Sem Pressa in Brazil. Kristen works with the chefs as they push the boundaries of their minds and culinary skills forging and hunting for their ingredients to create dishes for elite guests.
5. Tasting Wild
Melissa goes on a foraging journey around America and creates dishes in the big outdoors based on what she finds out in the wild rather than in her pantry and kitchen in National Geographic’s “Tasting Wild” on Hulu. The King Sauce-maker explores Oregon’s high desert, the Pacific Coast, and Mona Loa volcano among other destinations in five exciting episodes.
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