Williamsburg-based Vice Media has pretty much nailed the formula for must-see reality food TV: Their Munchies video series follows NYC chefs out on the town as they eat, drink and make merry at their favorite late-night haunts, and they wrap each episode with an after-hours party at which the featured cooks return to their own kitchens to whip up a drunken feast for their fellow revelers.
To kick off their third season, Munchies takes us out with chef Dale Talde, Dave Missoni and John Bush, the team behind Talde restaurant in Park Slope, as they dine at Franny’s in Prospect Heights (which Dale says sets the “benchmark” for what he hopes his own restaurant will ultimately achieve), drink at Pearls Social and Billy Club in Bushwick, and return to the Talde kitchen to cook up some late-night chili black bean brown butter clams and pork shank chow fun noodles.
Want more? Coming episodes of Munchies season three will feature chef Cal Elliot of Williamsburg’s Rye and Noah Bernamoff of Boerum Hill’s Mile End.
But really, our own personal favorite episode of all time, from way back in season one of the series, features the legendary Franks of Carroll Gardens’ Frankie’s Spuntino and Prime Meats, in which Frank Castronovo, from within a cloud of smoke, waxes:
“We’re putting food in people’s mouths. It’s not really about how great we can be and how popular we can be and how much money we can make. It’s really about truly believing that what you’re doing is something good, and what you’re doing is the right thing, because when you die, and you’re done, you’re not taking anything with you except what you did with your soul, how you enriched it, and that’s why I always feel like what I’m doing is good and right and true. Truthfully, I’d love to go out being known as the Grateful Dead of food. That would be my ultimate. That’s what we’re trying to do here.”
Come on now. Who can say it better than that?