Top 10 Best Cooking Shows of All Time

Bravo's Top Chef is the gold standard of US culinary competition, launching the careers of Hugh Acheson, Stephanie Izard, and Richard Blais while earning 15 Emmy Awards across 21+ seasons.

FX's Emmy-sweeping drama about a fine dining chef returning to run a Chicago sandwich shop captured the anxiety, artistry, and family dysfunction of restaurant culture with a visceral authenticity television had never achieved.

David Gelb's Netflix documentary series elevated food storytelling to a cinematic art form, profiling visionary chefs from Massimo Bottura to Niki Nakayama with the visual grammar of Terrence Malick.

David Chang's Netflix series took a deconstructive approach to food culture — asking what pizza, fried rice, and tacos really mean across cultures and dismantling culinary gatekeeping in the process.

Samin Nosrat's four-episode Netflix series, based on her James Beard Award-winning book, broke the mould of cooking television by teaching principles rather than recipes — food education at its most joyful.

GBBO transformed a tent in a Buckinghamshire field into the world's most beloved television kitchen, making bread-making and patisserie a national obsession and launching dozens of professional baking careers.

Anthony Bourdain's memoir-turned-television showed the world what actually happens behind restaurant kitchen doors — the chaos, the camaraderie, the burns, and the relentless pursuit of perfection.

Narrated by Anthony Bourdain, PBS's Mind of a Chef took an intellectual approach to cooking by following chefs like David Chang, Sean Brock, and April Bloomfield as they explored the ideas behind their cuisine.

Pierre Deschamps' 2015 documentary charted Rene Redzepi's creation of Noma — the Copenhagen restaurant that reinvented Nordic cuisine, pioneered foraging, and was named the world's best restaurant four times.

Bravo's Top Chef is the gold standard of US culinary competition, launching the careers of Hugh Acheson, Stephanie Izard, and Richard Blais while earning 15 Emmy Awards across 21+ seasons.

FX's Emmy-sweeping drama about a fine dining chef returning to run a Chicago sandwich shop captured the anxiety, artistry, and family dysfunction of restaurant culture with a visceral authenticity television had never achieved.

David Gelb's Netflix documentary series elevated food storytelling to a cinematic art form, profiling visionary chefs from Massimo Bottura to Niki Nakayama with the visual grammar of Terrence Malick.

David Chang's Netflix series took a deconstructive approach to food culture — asking what pizza, fried rice, and tacos really mean across cultures and dismantling culinary gatekeeping in the process.

Samin Nosrat's four-episode Netflix series, based on her James Beard Award-winning book, broke the mould of cooking television by teaching principles rather than recipes — food education at its most joyful.

GBBO transformed a tent in a Buckinghamshire field into the world's most beloved television kitchen, making bread-making and patisserie a national obsession and launching dozens of professional baking careers.

Anthony Bourdain's memoir-turned-television showed the world what actually happens behind restaurant kitchen doors — the chaos, the camaraderie, the burns, and the relentless pursuit of perfection.

Narrated by Anthony Bourdain, PBS's Mind of a Chef took an intellectual approach to cooking by following chefs like David Chang, Sean Brock, and April Bloomfield as they explored the ideas behind their cuisine.

Pierre Deschamps' 2015 documentary charted Rene Redzepi's creation of Noma — the Copenhagen restaurant that reinvented Nordic cuisine, pioneered foraging, and was named the world's best restaurant four times.