Food for Thought: Chef’s Table featuring Tootsie Tomanetz on Netflix

Tootsie Tomanetz in the smoke pit at Snow’s. Photo provided by Netflix.

Google “Snow’s beans” or “Snow’s brisket” and you will find this blog close to the top of your recommendations. I suppose we’ve been there for a while, but this search has become far more popular in the past week since the first episode of the new Chef’s Table season aired on Netflix. The season is all about barbecue, and the kickoff show is based at our favorite spot, Snow’s in Lexington TX.

Chef’s Table is not one of our top food shows, to tell the truth. It’s all hat and no cattle, as we say in TX…. beautiful photography and soulful portraits of chefs staring into space, but little actual food lore and a minimal story line. But when that story involves Snow’s beloved pitmaster Tootsie Tomanetz, who just celebrated her 85th birthday, we’re happy to learn about her day job (custodian at the local high school, and she looks to be good at it) and her resilience after losing her husband and later her son.

The episode spends lots of time in the smoke pit with Tootsie and Snow’s owner Kerry Bexley…. always a treat and more so right now when you can’t visit in person. In watching we realized Kerry may have funnin’ us when he repeatedly called Tootsie “Tootie” during our last visit. That was probably reacting to a little kid who had recently visited, because he clearly refers to her as “Tootsie” on Chef’s Table.

There are some excellent cooking shows on Netflix, notably The Chef Show and the various efforts of David Chang, and you can move on to those after you’ve viewed Snow’s Barbecue on Chef’s Table. Check ‘em out.