About
A. On location in Caiazzo, Italy.
With Franco Pepe at the end of a long shoot day for his Chef’s Table: Pizza episode.
Brian
McGinn
BRIAN McGINN is an Emmy-nominated, James Beard and Peabody-winning director, writer and producer. In 2013, he developed the documentary series Chef’s Table for television. New York Magazine said the series “changed the way documentary TV looks,” and Chef’s Table has since become the longest running program on Netflix. Since it launched over a decade ago, McGinn has directed a dozen episodes, as well as cast, executive produced and showrun the series, which has been nominated for 11 Emmys and won 5 James Beard Awards.
McGinn is also the writer, producer and director of the Netflix documentary Amanda Knox, which premiered at TIFF and was a NY Times and LA Times Critic’s Pick before being nominated for two Primetime Emmys, including Best Documentary. His previous director credits include the Netflix financial crime series, Dirty Money, the HBO comedy special Ferrell Takes The Field, starring Will Ferrell, and the Netflix documentary series, Trial by Media, which he also showran. McGinn was also the co-creator and showrunner of the Netflix series Street Food, and a co-executive producer of the second season of the smash hit FX series The Bear.
Over the years, Chef’s Table and Street Food have led McGinn to build deep relationships with chefs, artisans, and storytellers all over the world. What began as professional collaborations became real friendships, and those friendships opened doors to the kinds of experiences that don’t show up in guidebooks. People have welcomed him into their kitchens, their workshops, their homes, and their traditions, showing him a deeply personal side of the places they call home. From Nok Suntaranon guiding him through Bangkok’s food traditions to Patricia Mateo leading the way across Spain, from Kei Condo’s ceramic studio in Kasama to Wataru Hatano’s washi paper workshop in the mountains outside Kyoto, McGinn has found that the best way to understand a place is through the people who shape it.
Those relationships also turned him into a photographer. He is the co-photographer, with Adam Bricker, of Franco Pepe: Pizza Chef, published by Phaidon, their first cookbook together. His camera has since taken him through Italy, Japan, England, Spain, Thailand, the Faroe Islands, and across the United States. Whether it’s a three-Michelin-star kitchen in southern Spain or a family-run pigeon restaurant in the Castilian plains, a traditional puffin hunt on the smallest inhabited island in the Faroes or a bowl of hand-pulled noodles in Tokyo, McGinn is drawn to the same thing every time: someone doing something they love with extraordinary care.
