Ugly Delicious

An episode of UGLY DELICIOUS usually begins with a simple, broad topic like pizza or tacos. Hosts David Chang (the restaurateur behind Momofuku) and Peter Meehan start by checking out their favorite restaurants, and then slowly expand the scope of the episode to both high-brow and low-brow cuisine. For example, the pizza episode starts inside a classic New York pizzeria before traveling to Italy, Japan, and the city they think has the best American pizza, New Haven, Connecticut. Chang also talks about his love of fast-food pizza, visiting one chain and even training to be a delivery man. As each episode explores many different types of the food its focusing on, Chang uses the food to talk about deeper, more personal topics. In the pizza episode, for example, he wonders what it means for food to be "authentic": What is authentic pizza? Can authentic pizza be made outside of Italy? Can it be made using nontraditional ingredients, like clams or raw fish? Can fast-food pizza be authentic? Ugly Delicious never attempts to definitively answer these questions, even if Chang clearly has his own opinion on the answers, but instead uses different styles and points of view to attempt to see all sides of them.