Chef’s Table: Pizza continues the long-running docuseries where each episode profiles a chef doing amazing things in locations all over the planet. This new season centres on the food that it seems like almost everyone loves: Pizza. The first episode profiles Chris Bianco, who has been making some the best Neapolitan pizzas in the country since he opened Pizza Bianco in Phoenix in 1994. It’s so good that food writer Ed Levine called it “the best pizza in the world” in a book. As much as you may not think that the best pizza in the world could be made in Phoenix, by the time you meet and hear the story of Bianco, you’ll want to book a flight just to go to his restaurant. He was certainly the forerunner of the “pizza boom” in the US, where small artisanal pies are made in wood-fired ovens, with their bubbling, charred crusts and top-notch ingredients. When he moved to Santa Fe, he found out how abundant local farms were and the wonder of using local ingredients. Back in Phoenix, he opens Pizza Bianco and an empire was born. One of the things we’ve always appreciated about the Chef’s Table series is that it’s more concerned with the lives of the people making the food than the actual food itself. Sure, there are still lots of lovingly-shot views of the food in question.

– Compilation