Travel the Globe With Eric Ripert, One of the World’s Best Chefs

Chef Eric Ripert’s two-time Emmy-award winning TV series Avec Eric returns for its third season this Saturday.

Ripert is a cookbook author as well as the chef-owner of New York City restaurant Le Bernardin, which has upheld a four-star review from The New York Times for over two decades. That’s unheard of! Ripert himself is thought of as a kind of Zen master of fish: he’s calm, he’s collected, he constantly produces expertly cooked dishes. He’s the guy respected by every chef, from the one slinging kimchi tacos from a food truck to the one running a Michelin-starred modernist kitchen.

But as we will see in this season of “Avec Eric,” Ripert is interested in much more than olive oil-poached escolar and smoked sea trout, two of his dinner menu items. He travels the globe for creative inspiration, and we get to follow along for 12 episodes. This season, Ripert will helifish in Australia’s Northern Territory, harvest daikon along the North Korean border, and discover the meaning of temple cuisine in Seoul, among other things.

“Look at your food,” he says in the video above. “Think about it. Not too much—it’s not an intellectual exercise, it’s a sensual experience. But look at the food and appreciate it more.”

The premiere airs Saturday, February 28, at 9:30am EST/8:30am CST on the Cooking Channel.