08-08-2025
‘Chef's Table' cinematographer Adam Bricker on his ‘insane' Emmy nomination and how ‘the show has changed my life'
"Cinematography is the ultimate team sport," Adam Bricker tells Gold Derby after receiving two Emmy bids this year for Chef's Table and Hacks. Nominations morning was "insane" and "very special" to him, particularly as the former series is celebrating its 10th anniversary. "There are a lot of people that go into these things, and I'm just so happy that everyone's work has gotten out there and been appreciated."
The Chef's Table team celebrated four culinary superstars for its recent Legends season: Jamie Oliver, José Andrés, Thomas Keller, and Alice Waters. This was a particularly fitting journey for Bricker, who has been with the show since the very beginning in 2015. "The show has changed my life," he readily admits. "We evolved not just as filmmakers, but also as people." The challenge of capturing these icons was a "daunting" task, but one he couldn't wait to take on.
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Bricker, nominated specifically for the Oliver episode, explains that his team adopted a "less is more approach" when it came to filming the British chef. He made the cinematography work in harmony with Oliver's own archival footage from shows like The Naked Chef, which were "revolutionary" for that time. Bricker tried to capture a similar energy, so the Oliver episode was the first time the Chef's Table crew shot on full-frame 8K large format, creating a contrast with the grainy 16 millimeter footage.
Bricker also speaks about how the "food symphonies," the show's signature visual technique, have evolved over the years. For the Legends cycle, he wanted the intimate shots to have the energy of a professional photography shoot. "I loved the idea of the flashing strobe lights," Bricker notes. "So much of Jamie's life has been lived in the public eye, and the paparazzi play a huge part of his story. So, there's a little twist on that as well."
One of the hallmark "visual languages" of the series is slow motion, he tells us. "We talk about it quite a bit. Our visual inspiration initially was David Gelb's feature documentary, Jiro Dreams of Sushi, which really brought into the culinary cinema vocabulary this macro, slow motion language. So, we were sort of riffing on that." He continues, "When you're in these high-end kitchens working with the best chefs in the world, none of their movements are wasted and their knife skills and their tweezer work is on the next level."
Over the past 10 years, Bricker reveals that the most rewarding aspect of working on the show has been the relationships he made along the way. He not only gets to travel the world with friends and colleagues, but also forms close bonds with many of the chefs. During one outdoor barbecue scene, "Jamie pulls a piece of lamb off of his plate and feeds it to a baby, which was my one-year-old son," he smiles. "He's wearing a really cool sweater vest that says, 'What's Cooking?'"
In addition to cinematography, Chef's Table is also nominated at the 2025 Emmys for Best Music Composition for a Documentary Series and Best Documentary/Nonfiction Series.
This article and video are sponsored content by Netflix.
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