The first episode of the first season of the genre-redefining streaming series Chef’s Table on Netflix begins, as one might expect, in Italy. Massimo Bottura, the omnipresent, award-winning, and much-celebrated chef who was then simply famous and now runs a global gastronomic empire, is the star, also as one might expect.
What is unexpected, however, is where the story begins: not in Bottura’s wildly successful, three-Michelin-starred restaurant Osteria Francescana, but with an earthquake—a real one, not a metaphor. In 2012, a powerful quake visited terrible damage on the city of Modena, Bottura’s home and host to his restaurant. We see buildings crumble, sirens wail, and clouds of dust and debris obscure the lens.
