The show, by the Obama’s Higher Ground production company, assumes that its young viewers have already been exposed to quite a few culinary experiences or at least they are quite open to experimentation, unless the real audience is their foodie millennial parents.
What could ever be odd with a character who is part yeti and part waffle, and with his sidekick, part Japanese mochi and part strawberry ice cream? Nothing at all, if you suspend your belief to dive into the quirky reality of the new Netflix show ‘Waffles and Mochi,’ named after its two oddball protagonists and whose motto is “Listen to your vegetables and eat your parents.”
The show is a thoroughly enjoyable but peculiar creation. Like the two endearing puppets whose adventures we follow, it is fuzzy and lovable but a bit all over the place. Granted, I did not grow up watching Sesame Street or other educational shows for children, so I am not sure if what puzzles me is actually part of the genre. To start with, ‘Waffle and Mochi’ is literally all over the place: the main characters embark on their wanderings from the land of frozen foods, where they try to learn how to cook ice, the only ingredient at hand, by watching Julia Child on TV. Looking for live, fresh ingredients, they jump on a frozen food truck and they end up at a supermarket. Downstairs, the store offers both fresh and packaged food; among the recurrent characters are Shelfie, a shelf, and a baker. The variety and quality of the goods is such that Waffles points out that all the food is made of food, a jab at industrial products that is a bit ungenerous towards their own frozen origins.
The store also boasts a roof garden, from which vegetables are picked to be sold directly to shoppers who prefer a more hands-on experience, or to be brought downstairs for the hoi polloi. Among growing plants and raised beds we meet the supermarket owner, Michelle Obama, and her efficient assistant, Busy the Bee. They hire Waffles and Mochi on the spot, giving them different tasks for every episode. In the rooftop garden, the two protagonists also discover a magic flying cart that looks like a race car and can fly instantly wherever they want. The contraption allows the protagonists to follow their fancies and fantasies, taking them to any location around the world, just as any good toy should. Waffles and Mochi’s travels are whimsical and playful, unrestrained by space and time. In one episode, they put together a time machine with old boxes and a kitchen timer, which of course functions as expected. Objects constantly come to life, talking back and helping the protagonists in their missions. Because that’s what each episode is about: an always successful quest, at the end of which they are given a badge that prove their mastery of the ingredient that is the main theme of the episode.
For each episode, they also learn a life lesson that has nothing to do with food: accept yourself for who you are, even when others find you weird; what makes you special is not on the outside, on the inside; family comes in all shapes and colors, made by all the people you love; we all make mistakes and if we let ourselves we can make amazing discoveries; things sometimes don’t go as planned, so we need to be flexible and try something new. Now that I put them one after the other, they sound like wisdom nuggets from a meditation podcast…. This may be the nature of the beast, but can’t educational children shows just be fun and informative, helping viewers to explore the world, or do they always need to have a moral message that is supposed to make them better human beings? Except that at times the show’s life lessons feel a bit like an add-on, rather than subtly woven in the narrative. Or maybe, to be effective with children, they need to be on the nose… Anybody who has raised children probably has better answers to this than me.
The ingredients for each episode are simple and accessible enough: in the first season, Waffles and Mochi discover tomatoes, potatoes, salt, corn, rice, pickles, eggs, spices, mushroom, and water. Short montages feature children from around the world commenting their experiences with those food and what they taste like. Children also tell stories and traditional tales that come alive through animation, a bit in the Drunk History style where the drawn characters lip-synch the words of the narrators (those were among my favorite bits).
The show underlines the importance of the senses when we deal with food: flavors, textures, smells are central in understanding the ingredients. At times, visual representations of sensory elements are superimposed to live characters, just like in the famous scene in Ratatouille when Remy the rat tries to explain synesthesia to his brother. A whole episode is dedicated to herbs and spices as ingredients that bring color and personality to food.
However, the show assumes that its young viewers have already been exposed to quite a few culinary experiences unless, as I suspect, the real audience is their foodie millennial parents. Food preparation is central to the narrative and the protagonists are invited to cook and taste, which is probably meant to give agency to young viewers. The goal, though, is clearly not to make children feel more comfortable at the stove or to teach them actual kitchen skills, although at time useful tips are provided (don’t put too much salt on food; be careful when you cut vegetables to avoid to slice your fingers with them).
A parade of well-known chefs, from international celebrities like José Andres, Massimo Bottura, and Pía León to more local stars including Samin Nosrat, Preeti Mistry, Michael Twitty, Mashama Bailey, and Bricia Lopez, points to an audience that is supposed to be well informed about the global who’s who of high-end gastronomy. Moreover, the performances and crafts of artisans and cooks from around the worlds are given center stage, and they are not all male, white, and straight. Some episodes are enriched with cameos by famous artists: we run into Sia (in a cartoon where she play a tomato wearing her signature black and white wig), Common, Zach Galifianakis, and Rashida Jones. The show is meant to be multicultural and worldly. All culinary traditions are equally interesting and important. No food is eeewww-worthy: everything has to be tasted and appreciated, which is definitely a great lesson. Foods represent who we are, our personal stories, and our connection with our ancestors, a point the rice and corn episodes make quite clear.
Yet, one wonders if such content is not simply a ruse to attract cosmopolitan foodies, always interested in increasing their culinary capital. Among the specialties featured in the show, we are presented with mochi from Japan, mazamorra morada from Peru, gazpacho from Spain, and handmade tortellini from Italy. What children have actual access to such a variety of fresh ingredients and exotic dishes, or even be interested in them? Although the show is meant to be apirational, it does not have in its DNA the same egalitarian streak as Sesame Street, also because access to Netflix is far from universal. That said, ‘Waffles and Mochi’ is a ton of fun. The interactions between the puppets and the real-live characters are at times hilarious, especially when shot outdoors, and Waffles packs some irony, especially in his asides. Overall, quite binge-worthy.