Netflix renews Chef's Table for two new seasons
Chef's Table: Icons and Chef's Table: Desserts will each run four episodes, with creator David Gelb directing every one himself for the first time.
Netflix has ordered two new seasons of Chef's Table, the documentary series that turned static wide shots of plating into prestige television, the streamer confirmed on 23 September 2026.
The two seasons carry separate names and separate briefs. Chef's Table: Icons will track chefs who built a single restaurant into a lasting institution over decades of service. Chef's Table: Desserts turns the camera on pastry chefs and confectioners, following the precision and imagination behind sweets rather than savoury tasting menus.
Four episodes are planned for each season. Netflix and creator David Gelb have not named any of the chefs who will appear in either run, and a premiere date has not been set.
A tasting menu treated like a career retrospective, now applied to pastry as well as fine dining.
One director for both seasons
Gelb, who created the format in 2015, will direct every episode of both new seasons himself, according to the streamer. Earlier cycles split directing duties among a rotating team of filmmakers as the franchise expanded into single-subject and international editions.
Those spin-offs already include Chef's Table: France, Chef's Table: BBQ and Chef's Table: Legends, each keeping the same visual grammar: static frames, one chef per episode, a score that treats a tasting menu like a career retrospective.
The original series has run for more than a decade and won an Emmy for outstanding cinematography, a rare honour for a food format built on slow motion rather than competition or travel.
A crowded field for food television
The renewal lands as rivals chase the same slow-paced, chef-led format Chef's Table popularised. Apple TV+ and Max have each added restaurant documentaries in the past two years, and Netflix itself is releasing Being Gordon Ramsay, a six-part fly-on-the-wall series, later this year.
Casting announcements for Icons and Desserts are expected once filming wraps, a stage that has typically followed six to nine months after earlier seasons were ordered. Netflix has also declined to say whether the two seasons will release together or months apart.
Whichever chefs are chosen, the format's commercial pull is well established: past episodes have been credited with months-long booking surges at the restaurants they feature, from Central in Lima to Osteria Francescana in Modena. The eventual cast could just as easily be drawn from Food & Wine's 2026 Best New Chefs class as from an established three-star kitchen; earlier seasons have mixed both.
