15 Great Food Moments From This Year’s Emmy-Nominated TV Shows

Who doesn’t like pizza? Well, it turns out Gregory Eddie (Tyler James Williams) is maybe the only person. The grumpy substitute teacher in the charming and hilarious multi-nominated Abbot Elementary tries to get out of admitting this when fellow teachers are arguing about the best slice in Philadelphia by saying he only eats Baltimore pizza, and he likes it extra crunchy and extra wet. Yum.

Watch season one on Hulu.

Thanksgiving is always a big deal for outstanding animated nominee Bob’s Burgers—in season three we got the iconic “Thanksgiving Song,” shown in the clip above, and from there, Bob’s obsession with cooking on the holiday only deepened. So it’s worth celebrating the fact that, even by now in season 12, the series has come up with new ways to feature a Thanksgiving meal while maintaining the emotional depth the show is known for.

In this past season’s episode “Stuck in the Kitchen with You” Bob and Louise end up in the kitchen together making a meal for a nursing home—it’s the full-scale Thanksgiving dinner Bob’s been preparing to cook for his entire life. But he gets so into it that he turns into a real “Thanks-zilla.” Hilarity and heartstring-tugging ensue.

Watch every season on Hulu. 

Amanda Seyfried should win an Emmy solely for how she (as Elizabeth Holmes) goes to town on that cup of green juice. In The Dropout, Hulu’s original drama based on the true story of Elizabeth Holmes and the Theranos scam, Holmes’ obsession with green juice arises right alongside her voice deepening and her closet going all black. The drink is a representation of the image she thinks she needs to portray—at first sip, she hates the stuff, but after being constantly encouraged by her boyfriend and business partner Sunny Balwani (Naveen Andrews) to down the stuff, she eventually starts to believe the lie that she likes it. Sound familiar?

Watch the limited series on Hulu.

One of the most important episodes of Insecure’s final season didn’t have to do with food exactly, but more the lack of food. The show’s last couple seasons charted how the core friend group of Issa, Molly, Tiffany, and Kelli (Issa Rae, Yvonne Orji, Amanda Seales, and Natasha Rothwell) drifted apart as their lives became about other things. The way the entire series portrayed the natural ebbs and flows of friendship is one of the most accurate and compelling examples put to screen. And in “Chillin’, Okay?!” the group gets together for one of the last times that we see them on screen (cue the tears).

A scheduling snafu with girls’ night leaves the group with hours to kill before their dinner reservation so they, of course, drink way, way too much. Throw into the mix a game of the hilariously named “Questions in a hat” and you’ve got a recipe for secrets to come to the surface and things to get messy.

Watch every season on HBO Max.

Almost every single episode of the second season of I Think You Should Leave features an iconic food moment. There’s Bob Odenkirk in the diner, sloppy steaks, and, of course, Tim Robinson’s unwavering obsession with hot dogs. But “Dylan’s Burger” tops them all.

It’s not only a relatable premise (who hasn’t envied their dining companion’s meal choice?), but it encapsulates the show’s signature bizarre escalation that’s impossible to look away from. This sketch also highlights one of Robinson’s greatest skills: casting older, relatively unknown actors and trusting them to be the funniest person in the scene. Bob McDuff Wilson not only gets to steal Robinson’s burger, but steals the scene in the process.

Watch every season on Netflix.

Saturday Night Live is at its best when it’s bizarre. In “Meatballs,” Sarah “Squirm” Sherman is hiding a secret from Chris Redd, and that secret just happens to be a bunch of meatballs growing out of her flesh as skin tags with minds of their own. If the visual alone isn’t enough, these meatballs harmonize for a little meatball song that you’ll never be able to get out of your head. Just like the lumps growing out of Squirm’s extremities, that melody is highly contagious.

Watch most recent seasons on Hulu and Peacock.

Severance doesn’t give up its details easily. The sci-fi drama delighted in leaving viewers just as in the dark as the innies were from their outies, slowly leaving a trail of earth-shattering revelations in each episode. So when the premise of a “Waffle Party” was first mentioned, it really could have been anything. Without giving too much away, that Waffle Party did in fact feature real waffles, but the implication of the “party” is something much more sinister.

Watch season one on Apple TV.

Squid Game is full of violence, class commentary, and betrayal, but when the South Korean drama hit Netflix there was one true breakout star that had everybody talking: the dalgona cookie. Suddenly everyone and their mom wanted a recipe for the honeycomb treat, and cafes were even hosting their own dalgona challenges (though no one was killed during those, thank goodness). Yes, ultimately the cookie stands as a reminder of many deaths and the loss of innocence on a playground and several other dark themes, but that doesn’t mean it can’t also remain as a beloved confection.

Watch season one on Netflix.

Argyle (Eduardo Franco), one of Stranger Things’ new and beloved characters of the fourth season, works at a pizza chain called Surfer Boy Pizza, where the product we know as Hawaiian-style pizza is the crowning glory. He encourages everyone to try some fruit on their pie, including both Eleven and Mike, each of whom is astounded by the concept of pineapple pizza, having never heard of or tried it before. Mike even calls fruit on pizza “blasphemous.”

No matter what side of the issue you stand on, you have to admit the influential power of the cult Netflix show. Walmart has started selling Surfer Boy Pineapple Pizza, and the show even partnered with Domino’s to sling some retro pies.

Watch every season on Netflix.

No one on Succession seems to really enjoy food. They drink biodynamic wine because they think it makes them good people and they use sausages in games of psychological warfare. But even so, Tom (Matthew Macfadyen) is all too aware that the food in prison would be much, much worse. Of course, in this privileged world, he assumes that means that the meals behind bars will be the equivalent of a 24-hour diner breakfast. To see someone so out of touch and yet so deeply sad, well, that’s kind of what this show is all about.

Watch every season on HBO Max.

There were some complaints about the Christmas episode of season two of Ted Lasso when it first came out. It was seen as unnecessary, feel-good filler, stopping the narrative flow of the season. But that Christmas dinner meal is actually crucial for seeing how far this team of ragtag soccer players has come under Coach Lasso’s guidance. Not only does each player bring a dish that reminds them of home, building out backstory for some who may not always get as much of the spotlight, but it also shows the togetherness that’s been fostered on and off the field. What’s wrong with a nice feel-good Christmas episode anyway?

Watch every season on Apple TV.

Top Chef makes the list for obvious reasons—every single episode of the show hinges on delicious and beautiful food. But what makes this season really stand out is the hidden drama of one contestant who admits to the viewers, but not his fellow contestants or judges, that he still hadn’t regained his sense of taste or smell after getting COVID.

Chef Jackson Kalb somehow made it very far in the competition on pure instinct, performatively tasting dishes and commenting that they need more salt while in the kitchen only for producers to cut to a talking head interview of him reminding us that he can’t taste a damn thing. It’s the most dramatic season of reality television out there.

Watch every season on Peacock.

What happens when a vampire unfangs themself in an attempt to be better? Well, they need to get familiar with a human diet, for starters. In the best episode of What We Do in the Shadows’ Emmy-nominated season, we see Nandor (Kayvan Novak) get sucked into a cult-like wellness center for vampires where creatures of the night enter into a rigorous schedule of aerobics, humanity 101, and cooking human vegan meals (chopping up broccoli and throwing it in the trash). The leader of the center regularly chows down on human food to maintain her façade, but by the end of the episode, we see how she’s really getting her nutrients.

Watch every season on Hulu.

A romantic dinner on a boat for a couple celebrating their honeymoon in Hawaii—what could go wrong? In the world of The White Lotus, a lot. Exacting revenge on an entitled guest, hotel manager Armond (Murray Bartlett) books a dinner at sea for Rachel and Shane (Alexandra Daddario and Jake Lacy) while also promising the boat to Tanya (Jennifer Coolidge) for an emotional moment of spreading her mother’s ashes. Everyone in this scene is nominated for their own Emmy—that’s something worthy of a seaside champagne toast.

Watch season one on HBO Max.

From the very beginning, we know something dark is happening in Yellowjackets. The high school girls’ soccer team that crash-landed in the woods are still holding onto a lot of secrets about what really happened 25 years later. But from episode one we get hints at how these girls managed to survive. When adult Shauna (Melanie Lynskey) kills and then butchers a pesky rabbit in her garden, she does it with such ease that you know this isn’t her first time. More enlightening still is when she straight up tells her husband that the chili tastes better this time around because of the rabbit and he brushes it off as a joke. Maybe these girls were trying to tell the truth all along and no one was really listening.

Watch season one on Showtime.