CHEF'S TABLE: BBQ
Netflix, 3:00 a.m. ET
SEASON PREMIERE: This new menu of Netflix’s Chef’s Table is all about barbecue, and, like earlier seasons of this satisfying series, is much more about personality and biography than recipes and ingredients. The first show presented for this new season, on Snow’s BBQ pitmaster Tootsie Tomanetz, nearly brought me to tears – and not just because of the sight, and the imagined aroma, of her using a mop to slather overpopulated racks of brisket and pork ribs in her natural wood fire pits. “Tootsie” turned 85 earlier this year, in the midst of the pandemic, but still labors over the hot smokers that turned her little place in Lexington – not the city in Kentucky, but the small 1,000-resident hamlet in Texas – into a BBQ operation recently voted the best in that entire, barbecue-crazy state. When I was through watching the show, I was so moved by Tootsie’s personality and perseverance, I really, really wanted to sample her ribs. And it turns out you can: One of the ways she’s surviving these COVID-wary times is to offer certain menu items for nationwide shipping. That’s my reaction to only the first of this season’s Chef’s Table programs. I’m pacing myself, though, because I’m not sure either my diet or my wallet can afford the rest in one major viewing spurt. That would seem to redefine the term “binge-watching.”