From Scratch in Sweden. Credit: From Scratch

From Scratch Season 5: The World’s Most Human Food Show Grows Deeper Roots

12 Minute read

24 Apr 2025

Paul Feinstein

Journalist

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David Moscow returns with a new season of From Scratch, exploring how community, history, and hard truths shape what we eat—and why it matters.

“Food is at the center of everything.” That’s not just a tagline for From Scratch—it’s a revelation that deepens with every season. Now back for its fifth run, David Moscow’s globe-spanning docuseries has evolved into something far more layered than a culinary travelogue. Yes, he’s still harvesting ingredients, cooking regional dishes, and telling stories through meals. But this season, From Scratch becomes a meditation on how food shapes culture, community, conflict, and connection.

Premiering April 30 on Tastemade—with episodes available across platforms like Amazon, Pluto, Roku, and Samsung TV—the new season opens with a three-part American road trip. In Kansas City, Moscow meets refugees growing traditional crops on land granted by Catholic Charities, helping reshape the city’s culinary identity. In Northern California, he visits farmers facing down drought, fire, and a precarious future. These aren’t just recipe origin stories—they’re snapshots of food systems on the frontlines of social, environmental, and political change.

The scope is as ambitious as ever. From scaling a treacherous road in the Caucasus mountains of Georgia to explore ancient cheesemaking traditions, to tracing every ingredient in a classic New York bagel across continents, the show balances adrenaline with inquiry. As Moscow puts it, “You realize how tied together we all are—and how many people it takes to get one dish on a plate.”

What’s New in Season 5: Deeper Dives, Bigger Questions

Season 5 marks a clear evolution in From Scratch’s storytelling. While past seasons have spotlighted singular dishes and their raw ingredients, the new episodes thread those moments into larger, more urgent conversations. “We’re interviewing more scientists, historians, and anthropologists now,” Moscow said. “It’s a deeper dive. And it changes how you experience the food.”

This year’s structure mixes a domestic road trip arc with international fieldwork, expanding both the show’s scope and tone. A New York bagel becomes a globe-spanning odyssey—from Polish poppy seeds to Canadian salmon to Nova Scotian smoked fish. In Georgia’s Caucasus Mountains, a trek for shepherd’s cheese unfolds against a backdrop of ancestral land disputes and modern political tensions. “We’re pushing the edges of what the show can be,” Moscow said. “And we’re not just harvesting ingredients—we’re tracing power, migration, and legacy.”

A Human Thread Through Every Bite

Beneath the adventure and culinary discovery, From Scratch has always carried a quiet thesis: food connects everything. Season 5 makes that thesis explicit.

“We’re tied together more than we realize,” Moscow says. “People think they do things on their own, but if you eat a slice of pizza, there are 68 people behind that slice.”

This season, those people come into sharper focus. Like the butchers in Missouri working small to keep heritage farming viable. Or the teenagers in Arctic Norway hauling in invasive king crab to save their fishing towns. Wherever Moscow travels, the common thread is care—people growing, harvesting, slaughtering, and preparing food not just to survive, but to feed their neighbors and preserve their way of life.

“Most of the folks we meet,” he says, “they’re trying to make the world better through food. It’s hopeful. It makes you glad to be human.”

From Boulder’s seed savers working to protect ancestral crops to a Danish chef with a gangster past finding new purpose in the kitchen, From Scratch makes a compelling case that the food system—like the world—is strongest when it’s plural.

Global Journeys, Local Stakes

While Season 5 starts on the road in the U.S., it soon expands into a wider orbit—Northern Europe, the Caucasus Mountains, and beyond. But even in the most remote locations, the show keeps its feet on the ground and its camera on the people who make food possible.

In Denmark, Moscow visits Jordnær, the three-Michelin-star restaurant run by Chef Eric Vildgaard. The cuisine is refined, Nordic, precise. But the backstory? Anything but typical.

“Eric was a gangster,” Moscow says. “Like, a real one. He went to prison in Denmark and ended up on a prison ship fishing. He started cooking for the other fishermen. And something clicked.”

What followed was a radical transformation—from a life of crime to one of creativity and discipline in the kitchen. After a stint at Noma, Vildgaard and his wife opened Jordnær, where she runs the front of house and he leads the kitchen. Their partnership is as central to the story as the food.

“It's one of the most incredible meals I’ve had,” Moscow says. “But it’s also about redemption, partnership, and building something meaningful—together.”

In Georgia, From Scratch heads to the mountains, driving treacherous switchback roads to reach isolated shepherd villages where cheese is still cured in lambskin. In Norway, it’s king crab—an invasive species that’s revitalized old fishing towns while complicating the local ecosystem.

What unites these journeys is a sense of stakes. These aren’t just pretty destinations—they’re places where food holds history, power, and consequence. And Moscow, as always, isn’t just tasting. He’s listening.

Context, Connection, and the Bigger Picture

What sets From Scratch apart in its fifth season isn’t just the global scope or heartwarming meals—it’s the context. This season leans deeper into the “why” behind every dish, enlisting historians, scientists, and anthropologists to help tell a fuller story of how food reflects culture, conflict, migration, and memory.

“We started bringing in experts a couple seasons ago,” Moscow explains. “And it changed everything. You start to understand the meal not just as something delicious, but as part of a longer arc—of colonization, adaptation, survival.”

In one episode, a single slice of pizza becomes a microcosm of the global supply chain. In another, a refugee-run farm shows how food can bridge cultures and rewrite local identity. “Diversity is strength,” says Moscow. “You see it in the field, when people of different backgrounds come together to grow and feed. It’s undeniable.”

The show also continues to embrace its emotional undercurrent: nostalgia, ritual, and the unshakable link between food and memory. In a special episode dedicated to New York’s iconic bagel with lox and cream cheese, Moscow sources every ingredient from its point of origin—poppy seeds in Poland, salmon in British Columbia, dairy in upstate New York—to show just how international a single breakfast can be.

“It was the meal of my childhood,” he says. “And when you really break it down, it’s a story of migration, preservation, and innovation. It’s not just comfort food—it’s history on a plate.”

A Show That Makes You Hungry—and Hopeful

More than ever, From Scratch reminds us that food is never just food. It’s the result of countless hands, histories, and hopes—grown, gathered, cooked, and shared across borders. Whether it’s a shepherd aging cheese in a mountain hut, a refugee farmer planting new roots in unfamiliar soil, or a chef revisiting his childhood one bagel at a time, every episode is a reminder that we’re all connected by the act of feeding and being fed. As Moscow puts it, “It’s a heartening experience. You come away just happy to be human.”

24 Apr 2025