I may be reading too much into the housekeeping proclivities of a fictional character, but I'm chalking that up to the exquisite detail the writers, crew, and cast - including culinary producer and chef Courtney Storer, creator and co-showrunner Christopher Storer, and chef Matty Matheson as restaurant handyman Fek - have put into the creation of this sweaty, heartfelt, passionate, empathetic, and often enervating portrayal of a profession and people I hold dear, and characters I've come to adore.

It trips into molecular whimsy via el Bulli, wends over to Japan to meditate on the methods of Masaharu Morimoto and Shizuo Tsuji goes fancy Cali with 1988 F&W Best New Chef Thomas Keller, Alice Waters, and 2009 F&W Best New Chef Christopher Kostow and finds soul and root in Italian and Italian American home cook fare as well as the works of African American scholars like Dr. It veers toward Scandinavian precision with a whole suite of René Redzepi tomes (though pastry chef Marcus keeps copies stashed out of harm's way on a shelf above his work station) and the works of Magnus Nilsson and Christian Puglisi. It's deeply steeped in French technique á la the Troisgros Brothers, Pierre Gagnaire, Jacques Maximin, Joël Robuchon, Jacques Pépin, Sébastien Bras, and their peers.

The books, which have seemingly tripled or quadrupled in number (and which I paused and took grainy pictures and screenshots of and compared against my own collection or used fragments of words or graphics on the spine to track down like I work for a culinary CSI division), are meticulously selected and entirely fitting with the continuing self-education of a fine-dining chef who's done stints at Noma, Eleven Madison Park, The French Laundry, and their fictional analogues.

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