Of the few positive things that came out of the COVID-19 pandemic, low-budget video production was one. Many people, while stuck in their homes for months on end, decided to try their hand at content creation. Those people included celebrities, who were without their big budget studios and camera crews. World-renowned chefs like Eric Ripert, Massimo Bottura, Ina Garten, and Roy Choi took to digital platforms and embraced live streaming to share their passion for cooking — during a time when so many people needed an escape. 

Earlier this year, Chef David Chang (owner of Momofuku restaurants and host of Netflix’s Ugly Delicious) carried on the unpolished and informal spirit of the pandemic with his Netflix series Dinner Time Live with David Chang. Though many TV chefs dabbled in on-the-fly content during the pandemic, most of them went right back to the more structured and highly edited content by which they gained their fame. 

Chang, however, a self-proclaimed introvert and perhaps glutton for discomfort, decided to give up the security blanket of edited television. Though he’s become a controversial force in the culinary world, love him or hate him, Chang’s desire to give live audiences an unfiltered look into the kitchen has left an imprint on the food media landscape. Let’s dig into the concept of live stream cooking shows and Chang’s impact on culinary digital media.

What’s the Appeal of a Live-Streamed Meal?

Television channels like the Food Network have built their empire around the fact that people enjoy watching others cook. There have been studies showing the correlation between the act of cooking and mental health benefits and many people turn to classic comfort shows like Ina Garten’s Barefoot Contessa or Alton Brown’s Good Eats to unwind. But the shows we’ve grown to love on big networks typically have one thing in common: high production value (or hi-pro, for short). This not only means that we see a much more glamorized version of a home kitchen, but we’re spared the mundane details of cooking that we don’t care too much about (e.g. watching dough rise, de-veining shrimp, etc.) The power of editing means we don’t have to watch Gordon Ramsay wash his vegetables before he sautes them. So, why would anyone watch a chef cook a meal, totally live, with no cuts?

It’s casual and approachable.

If you think of some of the most admired chefs in television history, many of them have a common trait – they’re real, genuine, and approachable. Think of Julia Child with her playful approach to classic French dishes, or Anthony Bourdain, the easy-going conversationalist who makes you feel as if you’ve known him for years. Putting a chef on a live stream immediately removes any air of pretension because there’s nowhere for them to hide. The audience will catch any imprecise chop, drip of oil, or burnt sauce, just as they would a friend inviting them into their own kitchen.

You see the challenges first-hand.

I watch a lot of cooking competitions, and one of the things that amuses me the most is when something goes so horribly wrong that they have to completely start over. There have been so many contestants on The Great British Bake-Off who have tossed it in the bin and started from scratch. When you watch cooking live, you see a chef’s mistakes and can immediately learn from them – without having to face the challenge on your own in the kitchen. I’ve never made a hollandaise sauce, but I know how to break it, from watching at least a dozen competitive chefs do it for me. 

There’s usually some interactivity. 

When a chef broadcasts their work to thousands of viewers online, they usually open a door for conversation. Most live stream platforms allow for immediate comments from the audience, though it’s up to the hosts to read and respond while they’re understandably busy cooking. Oftentimes chefs will have an assistant in charge of monitoring the chat and asking relevant (and safe) questions while they continue their work uninterrupted. Regardless if you choose to ask the chef a question live, the camaraderie on social platforms also makes the live stream experience more exciting.

The Birth of Dinner Time Live 

In 2021, Chang took a risk. He spent his own money and resources to build a kitchen, equipped with appliances that were affordable to the average Netflix viewer (LG, to be exact), and enough room for a camera crew and a couple famous guests. It would be an intimate dinner party — that would also include anyone watching Netflix at 7pm on a Tuesday. Though he didn’t know that for sure, as he built the kitchen without knowing if Netflix would actually go for this idea. Sure, he had a relationship with the streaming service due to his hit show Ugly Delicious, but there was no guarantee that his investment would pay off. “The safety net [was] we can rent it out. We can film other s**t,” Chang said.

He invited Netflix executives over to the set and essentially piloted his first episode. “We sold them the show by putting them in the show,” Chris Ying, Chang’s friend and colleague at Majordomo Media, says. Without exactly explaining their concept, the act of cooking live planted the seed of the idea for the show — and the rest is culinary history.

Chang’s Approach to Digital Media

Last November, Chef Chang attempted something that would make moms across the country cringe: cooking a Thanksgiving dinner in two hours with a bunch of cameras in his kitchen. Along with Ying, and James Beard Award-winning chef and restaurateur, Chris Bianco, Chang opened up his kitchen to an audience on YouTube. The format was a precursor to Dinner Time Live (it would premiere two months later), though it lacked a couple notable things. 

First, the set was far less polished, probably because Netflix hadn’t sent their set dresser to spruce it up yet. It also lacked the two lucky celebrity guests that the show is based around. It was just three men and a camera, going in and out of focus as they cooked, staggered between counters. A giant whiteboard stood in the corner of the screen, with Chang’s chicken scratch noting the Thanksgiving menu. The camera starts rolling with no script, and as Bianco attempts to talk, you quickly learn he’s not even wearing a mic. The video has 40,000 views on YouTube to date. 

Watching a live stream for two hours and six minutes isn’t for everyone, but the general sentiment in the YouTube comments is overwhelmingly positive. Viewers praised Chang for showing the reality of cooking an ambitious dinner and loved the unscripted, on-the-fly nature of the video. Chang’s success at unscripted video comes from a personal need to adapt and grow. He quickly recognized during and post-pandemic that the trendiest things in food and media in general, was the ephemeral. People want temporary experiences, or, at least to feel like they’re temporary (Dinner Time Live will live on Netflix indefinitely). 

After a year of cooking live on YouTube and Netflix, he’s also recognized what matters when it comes to keeping things authentically live. “One of the big changes from the beginning of the season was, the goal was to do everything from the start, scratch. No mise en place,” Chang says. “And I thought, ‘Oh, street cred, it’s gonna be cool!’ Guess what? No one [expletive] cares if I prep out beforehand. It’s better television.”

Is There a Future for Live-Streamed Cooking Shows?

Dinner Time Live is currently in its second season, a holiday-themed bundle of nine, fifty-minute episodes. There are no additional live cooking events on the docket, and it makes you wonder if that’s deliberate or if there are few chefs willing to take on the challenge. One of the biggest challenges to cooking live, Chang claims, is being able to time the specific beats of the show. 

“Keeping time is by far the hardest thing for me,” Chang said on his podcast. “What you don’t have on the show is somebody holding a card being like, you need to be done with course one now, you need to be done with course two, now move on to course three.” 

But as a slew of amateur and professional chefs create new YouTube videos every day, Chang knows that it’s essential to make adjustments to keep moving the genre forward. “The Holy Grail is like, how can we make this experience even more interactive for [the] audience?” he says. “How can we make it so that it feels like you are more and more in it?” 

It’s a valid question, with the rise of pop-up dining and popular restaurants and chefs booking live events like Coachella and Outside Lands. How can the dining industry create an immersive experience for those who’d rather just stay home? It might be the perfect time to start seriously looking into smell-o-vision. 

If you enjoyed this article, check out my previous AV on the Menu where I dig into the culinary journey of Le Petit Chef!

AV on the Menu is a series of articles that dive into the intersection of the culinary world and the AV industry. Whether it’s immersive dishes, projection-mapped tables, or digital menus, this series will not only have you drooling but learning about exciting new tech, too.  

Image credit: Getty/Rachel Murray