Food Web Series: 8 of our Favourites

How To… with Matty Matheson

Covered in tattoos and rarely seen without a trucker cap, Matheson is best described as a “big sweary Canadian.” Matty’s ‘How To’ videos for Vice’s Munchies channel see him explain his dishes in the manner of a cool (if slightly terrifying) uncle. Start with his recipe for ‘Cheeto Macaroni Cheese’ – Matty spends a good chunk of the runtime in the bath, then uses a block of cheese as a puppet. Food, eh? What's it like?

Dining on a Dime

Eater and New York Times columnist Lucas Peterson speaks multiple languages, knows everything there is to know about food, and gets on like a house on fire with everyone he meets. You should want to slap him, but you don’t; he has ‘charisma’, we believe it’s called.

Dining on a Dime visits food trucks, backstreet eateries and small restaurants across the US, showing off the incredible (and incredibly cheap) food on offer if you only know where to look. And now you do.

You Suck at Cooking

A show that combines genuine instruction with top-notch piss-taking, You Suck at Cooking features snarky advice from a pair of disembodied hands. The trick is to take the actual advice with a grain of salt, and learn from the overall themes of the show. In this case, that means making sure your salsa has a good mix of ingredients, but not mixing your salad with a power drill.

Cooking With Dog

Never has a three word pitch been more accurate. The web phenomenon couldn’t be simpler; a chef cooks, while a dog sits nearby. Will the dog do anything? Almost certainly not. Is this all a joke? Nope, this is a serious cookery show. Will you all go and watch an episode now? Of course you will – it’s called Cooking With Dog.

Food Lab

Science time! The Food Lab series takes kitchen problems we all face – Why has my hollandaise split? Why can't I cook a steak? – and looks for scientific answers that make use of the electrical gadgets you never use. Follow their advice and you’ll be making suspiciously good food in no time, leaving a trail of kitchen equipment in your wake.

Fuck, That’s Delicious

Rapper Action Bronson bounds around the world eating, smoking, swearing and performing in Fuck, That’s Delicious. As telly ideas go, ‘big man go travel’ is one of the oldest in the book, but this is all about the delivery. It’s basically a modern day foodie version of Whicker’s World, only with more weed-smoking and big sandwiches – and you don’t get that from your precious Hairy Bikers, do you?

Food Warriors

Take a journey on the A-train of the New York subway with Dallas Penn & Rafi Kam in their Food Warriors series. At each stop the duo get off the train, ask the local population where to go for some lunch, then hit it up. It’s the layout that makes this series a winner – navigate via the subway map, and prepare to lose several hours of your day on a vicarious food crawl.

Chef’s Table

This Netflix exclusive is a three-way cross between a Masterchef segment, a high-quality screensaver and an enormous bag of cash money. The dishes look incredible, the chefs all appear to be absolutely terrifying, and there are sweeping helicopter shots of rainforest for no good reason. Fire it up on the biggest, highest-definition telly you can find, as you balance your underwhelming dinner on your lap. Aspirational media’s great, isn’t it?