'Omnivore' tells the stories of eight essential ingredients—from salt to tuna to corn—and where they come from, reminding the viewer that what we eat is a window into the lives of those who made it.
We are what we eat, although the adage may be more applicable to humanity on a global scale than to the literal individual—a new series narrated by chef René Redzepi, chef at the acclaimed Copenhagen restaurant, Noma. The eight-episode Apple TV+ show tells the stories of eight essential ingredients, from salt to tuna to corn, under the premise that it’s food that truly unites us all. Written and executive produced by Matt Goulding, Omnivore impressively spans the globe, shifting its storytelling from country to country as it attempts to reveal essential truths about what we consume and why.
On the surface, the series seems requisite—an adult take on Michelle Obama’s children’s series Waffles + Mochi, which saw puppets traveling the world to learn about salt, pickles, corn and more. Several of its episodes overlap with Omnivore’s chosen ingredients, although each addresses them in a very different way. But where Omnivore succeeds is in asking questions about sustainability and global economies. In the premiere episode, which focuses on chiles, the producers head to Serbia to learn about string paprika peppers, which are cultivated by hand by villagers in Donja Lokošnica who are struggling to pass the trade on to the younger generation. In another episode, about salt, we see fleur de sel carefully collected with rakes in Noirmoutier, France. It’s clear that these ingredients exist only thanks to human skill, an impactful idea that threads through Omnivore.
Redzepi’s presence is sometimes essential to the narrative, but other times he’s absent from the filming, existing only a voiceover. The chile episode, which sets the tone for the series, is framed by Noma, ending with a staged service at the Copenhagen restaurant where everyone, including the staff, chow down on extremely spicy chiles, but otherwise Redzepi is not part of the episode’s segments, shot in Serbia, Thailand and Louisiana. He shows up elsewhere, eating sushi in Tokyo or looking wistfully into a field as he opines about corn, and he occasionally brings the camera into the kitchen with him as he showcases Noma’s famous preserved ingredients. The writing itself is poetic and existential, although it is also imbued with essential facts and figures. It sometimes veers into the overwrought, but Goulding manages to make each episode informative, even for those who regularly consume food TV shows and have heard and seen some of this before.
As the title implies, Omnivore doesn’t take a stance on plant-based eating versus indulging in animal products (as some critics and viewers assumed before the show’s debut). It acknowledges that cultures around the world eat differently and we can learn from each other. There’s an entire episode about pigs, where Redzepi wonders what the animal might ask humans, who have transformed a wild beast into a beloved ingredient. In the tuna episode, there is discussion about overfishing and how the tuna industry has changed in the last decade as less fish become available in the sea. There’s no didactic message embedded in these episodic glimpses, only questions worth asking and pondering. It doesn’t make you want to eat tuna any less—in fact you may want sushi immediately after seeing a Japanese chef butcher a giant tuna.
Omnivore is not a series about Noma, or even really about Redzepi. While he does share personal anecdotes about the ingredients and about his approach to food, the core of each of the eight episodes is the people around the world who cultivate, farm and produce each item. This approach may throw viewers off, particularly as the promotional material features Redzepi illuminated like some sort of culinary food deity. But it’s an approach that feels truer to the thematic scope of the series, which emphasizes the unifying connective tissue food generates rather than the innovation of an individual. The show comes to a close with corn, an episode that is more politically-tinged than some of the others as Redzepi describes the tension between Mexico and America as competing producers of the vegetable. He recounts a food memory of his own, reminding the viewer that what we eat is a window into the lives of those who made it. It’s a poignant thought and one that resonates throughout Omnivore, a show that ultimately contends that what we eat is what we will become.
