“Tuca & Bertie” Is the Best New Food TV Show You Haven’t Heard of

Netflix’s latest animated comedy might present like an illustrated journey into the weirdest parts of the brain, but for those of us now obsessed with the latest offering from BoJack Horseman’s Lisa Hanawalt, Tuca & Bertie is clearly a food television show. Sure, it seems like a Tiffany Haddish and Ali Wong-voiced comedy about two young birds making their way in the world, but if you look closer, Tuca & Bertie is definitely all about great eating.

The opening scenes of the show involve Tuca (a bodacious and audacious toucan) stealing an ice cream cone and Bertie (an introverted song thrush) baking muffins, and the show only goes deeper into food from there. There’s the fact that Bertie is an “amateur chef” who, in the first episode wins a croissant tournament against a Pastry Pete — he won the Tasty Num-Num award last year for his combination of the cruller and a bundt cake, the Crunt. Then there’s Tuca’s constant need to turn everybody’s drawers into mini-fridges full of cold cuts.

But the food ties don’t extend just to the good jokes: there’s also a handful of characters voiced by Nailed It! star Nicole Byer — including, coincidentally, a cake made of Bertie’s boyfriend’s grandma’s ashes. And creator Lisa Hanawalt is not just playing games with the food: astute readers will recognize her name from some of the coolest spreads to grace the now defunct food magazine, Lucky Peach.

The food details are impeccable — like when Tuca points out that Bertie’s going to be the kind of person who throws dinner parties where she serves “things that are actually just toast” like crostini and bruschetta, or the “Chef’s Code,” which includes “never utter the word ‘mayonnaise’” and lists acceptable synonyms such as remoulade, aioli, creamy-cream-a-roux; “make vegetables hot and keep fruit cold;” and “seriously, nobody likes hot fruit.” It’s funny because it’s true, and also because this mix of Broad City’s delightful takes on female friendship and Lucky Peach’s irreverent but loving skewering of the food world makes it the best food show on television right now.