Genre et barbecue: genre, tradition, innovation et espace dans la série Netflix Chef’s Table: BBQ (2020)

Abstract

Barbecuing is often highlighted as one of the most masculine forms of cooking. In this paper, I will analyse a recent Netflix documentary series, Chef’s Table: BBQ, with portraits of four different barbecue chefs, including two women. The barbecue chefs are from Australia, Mexico, and the US. The goal of the paper is to discuss how this documentary reframes our understanding of gender and barbecuing by including these highly acclaimed female barbecue chefs. The main argument of the paper is that despite the series’ celebration of female barbecue chefs, more subtle forms of gender distinctions are nonetheless apparent, notably in relation to mobility and how the male chefs are described as innovative and as individuals who go beyond their culinary roots, unlike the female barbecue chefs who are defined by immobility and tradition. In the discussion, it is argued that the series reflects two oppositional, but co-existing trends in contemporary food consumption: 1) the urge to be innovative, cosmopolitan, and hip and 2) a nostalgia for a more rooted, traditional, and locavore approach to food. It might be worth considering more generally how these trends are gendered in different contexts.