A Chef's Life

A Chef's Life was an American documentary-style cooking show created by Cynthia Hill and Vivian Howard.

Both Hill and Howard left their small, rural communities and returned again years later, Vivian to open Chef & the Farmer, and Cynthia to focus on southern storytelling.

[1] The show was also nominated for a Daytime Emmy in 2015 for Outstanding Single Camera Photography and was a 2014 James Beard broadcast award finalist.

[6] Corey Lowenstein of The News & Observer wrote, "Howard and Hill's partnership works because both women intuitively understand the food landscape they are trying to portray."

It won a Peabody Award in 2013 "for its refreshingly unsensational depiction of life and work in a modern restaurant—with generous sides of Southern folkways and food lore.

[8] "The whole point of A Chef's Life is to showcase the people and traditions of Eastern North Carolina, not some version of them gussied up for TV.

"[9] A 2018 Jezebel article titled "The Future of Food TV Is Female" parallels Samin Nosrat's Netflix show Salt Fat Acid Heat to Vivian Howard's PBS series A Chef's Life.

Traditionally, women on food TV are chained to a marble island in a large, well-appointed home, cooking a meal for their families in tightly-edited, half-hour bites.