Aziz Ansari's Netflix Series Is a Love Letter to Food
Comedian Aziz Ansari has a lot of street cred when it comes to food. His fans have known that since at least 2011, when a GQ writer followed Ansari, LCD Soundsystem’s James Murphy, and Chef David Chang on a booze-fueled cuisine crawl across Tokyo. There’s also the food nicknames speech from his “Parks & Recreation” character Tom Haverford (“Chicken parm is chicky chicky parm parm;” “I call eggs pre-birds or future birds”); the one-episode YouTube series called “Food Club,” in which Ansari and friends bestow plaques upon their favorite restaurants; and his role on “The Kroll Show” as chef/owner of a food truck called Molecular Pastranomy.
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So it’s no surprise food plays a major part in his critically acclaimed new Netflix series, “Master of None.” The show is a snapshot of 30-something cool-guy urban life in the year 2015, so all the edibles, cocktails, restaurants, and bars reflect that experience. Ansari’s character Dev, an actor, loves a Negroni, furiously surfs the web for taco listicles, and gets a KitchenAid pasta maker attachment as a present from his girlfriend.
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There’s more. MINOR SPOILER ALERTS. Dev has sex with a New York City food critic played by Claire Danes. Dev is invited to a fellow cast member’s trailer for Cinnabons baked in a toaster oven. “We just have to wait for the glaze to thaw,” says his on-set friend. “Takes a few hours. Should be ready by nightfall.” The most cringe-worthy scene of the series plays out in the first episode and involves the morning-after pill Plan B and Martinelli’s apple juice.
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One must be an obsessive reader of New York Magazine’s Grub Street or Eater New York to catch all the restaurant cameos and mentions. There’s a heart-to-heart talk between Dev and his dad at El Rey Coffee Bar & Luncheonette, a squabble over a King Kong sundae at Morgenstern’s Finest Ice Cream, sandwiches from Parm, coffee at Marlow & Sons, an after-party at Achilles Heel, a bad date at Dirty French, a walk through the mirrored hallway of Mission Chinese Food, and an ill-timed stop at the Tacos Morelos truck that provides one of the series’ funniest lines: “What am I supposed to do now? Go eat the second best taco like some kind of asshole?”
Even the end of “Master of None” has a food twist. Without giving anything away, it could bode for a delicious second season.
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