Sex, food and politics in Apple TV+ drama Carême, about France’s first celebrity chef
He went from poor kitchen boy to leading French chef 200 years ago. Apple TV+ drama tells the story of Napoleon’s chef Antonin Carême
He is a dream in the kitchen – and elsewhere in the house. He makes a mean cream-puff tower. And he has got moves like Jagger.
Alas, Antonin Carême has been dead since the 1830s, but nobody is perfect, right?
Most people have heard of Napoleon Bonaparte, but not many are familiar – even in France – with the story of this chef who cooked for the French emperor and his contemporaries, rising from a poor kitchen boy to become a standard-bearer of French cuisine.
The series, which dropped its first two episodes this week, also shows how Carême was not just a cook, or master pastry maker, or, well, sex god. We watch as he is pulled into political intrigue by his boss, the cunning diplomat Talleyrand, and used as a spy.