If you're a foodista with a blue streak, you'll love the TV series Foodie Love to discover for free on arte.tv. Released in 2019, this romantic comedy in 8 episodes of 32 minutes tells the story of two singles meeting around their common passion for gastronomy. Romance and good food are on the menu of this tempting fiction.
A series full of greed
As the title suggests, the Spanish Tv series Foodie Love offers a tasty mix of romance and food. Beware, if you've made a good resolution to go on a diet at the beginning of the year, this drama might make you hungry!
In Barcelona, two thirty-somethings meet around their common taste for gastronomy. Through the episodes and their culinary appointments, the series traces the birth of desire and love between these two characters.
It all starts with a coffee date, when the two heroes meet for the first time via a dating app. But of course, their story and their culinary experiences will not stop there...
Each new love encounter is centered on a menu, from the small traditional Japanese food shop to the big Michelin-starred restaurant, via the ice cream shop and the cocktail bar!
Love and gastronomy on the menu
With totally assumed greed, Spanish director Isabel Coixet (The Bookshop) intertwines culinary discoveries and exploration of feelings.
Around a table and/or shared food, the characters will get to know each other, play the game of seduction and experience their share of awkwardness and complications.
Cut into slices (sorry: episodes) of about half an hour, this love story becomes less indigestible and we find ourselves savoring with appetite these sentimental tribulations sprinkled with a zest of humor.
Even if the links between cooking and seduction have often been explored on the screen, in this series they are combined with great taste.
Foodie Love is of course aimed at gourmets, but not only! Viewers who don't know much about cooking could also be seduced, as the dishes and gestures of the cooks are filmed with grace and greed.
A love story in the air of time
With Foodie Love, Spanish director Isabel Coixet has cooked up a modern romance, both digital and gastronomic.
These 2.0 lovers are two fine connoisseurs... who are never seen cooking but most often exchanging messages.
Don't ask me what these two lovebirds are called: until the last episode, the protagonists of this love story remain anonymous and are referred to only as he and she.
She (Laia Costa) works in publishing and he (Guillermo Pfening) is a mathematician. Fun fact that spices up the story, the viewer gets into the characters' heads and hears what they are thinking even when they say nothing!
This narrative sleight of hand puts the viewer in an omniscient position that we sometimes wish we had in real life.
A treat to rediscover
This Tv series full of good things and (good) feelings is like a delicacy that we enjoy rediscovering when we had forgotten it at the bottom of a cupboard.
It is indeed the first series produced by the European subsidiary of the American platform HBO in 2019. But it was not put online on arte.tv until the summer of 2021.
The Foodie Love series, which was shot between Barcelona, Rome and Occitania, reminds us of the pre-Covid world with its packed restaurants, impulsive travel and hedonism.
The secondary characters bring a welcome dose of humanity to this gourmet romance that you want to savor in one bite. If this presentation has whetted your appetite, you can find all the episodes on arte.tv (link below).
Don't worry: this Tv series is not a pure romantic comedy but manages to find the right balance between spiciness, sweetness and bitterness. Gourmets are in for a treat!