Thirty-Minute Heals: PBS Chronicles “A Chef’s Life”

PBS’ “A Chef’s Life” features the chef, Vivian Howard as she, her husband Ben Knight, and young twins plant roots (back) in Howard’s home state of North Carolina, an area to where Howard said she’d never return.

Howard and Knight met in New York, where they embraced city life and metropolitan kitchens. Yellow tractors have now replaced yellow cabs; strolling along rows of earth-covered potatoes the new concrete sidewalks. Their professional passion still exists regardless of zip code, in the form of the popular restaurant, “Chef & the Farmer.”

On this Emmy- and Peabody- and James-Beard-award-winning documentary series, Howard at times reveals an insightful vulnerability, as the camera captures the complexity of transition, not in the moving from city A to small town B, but in her quest to remain an active chef, amid growing public recognition and all the responsibilities that come with. At the heart of “A Chef’s Life” is not just a woman’s return home, but a rediscovery of that home with (even more) respectful pride.