Awkwafina is stepping into an unexpected role with a new Apple TV series that mixes cooking, travel, and personal history. The show, The Unlikely Cook with Awkwafina, follows the actor as she reconnects with her family’s restaurant background and learns skills she never picked up at home.
Across eight episodes, she explores food not as an expert, but as someone trying to understand where she comes from. The journey brings humor, curiosity, and heart, offering a different lens on Asian American experiences. Awkwafina, known off-screen as Nora Lum, built her career through standout roles in Crazy Rich Asians, The Farewell, and Marvel’s Shang-Chi, yet she admits she never learned to cook growing up.
Apple Expands Its Culinary Storytelling
Apple TV has been steadily growing its nonfiction food content. Instead of traditional competition formats, the platform focuses on personality-driven storytelling that links food with travel and culture.
Earlier projects paved the way, including The Reluctant Traveler, which sent Eugene Levy around the world. Apple also introduced Knife Edge: Chasing Michelin Stars, a series that follows restaurants through the pressure and excitement of earning top-tier recognition.
Awkwafina’s new show fits into that approach by blending personal exploration with the realities of the food world—without losing its playful tone.
More Than a Cooking Show
Throughout the series, chefs, relatives, and restaurateurs guide Lum as she reconnects with the legacy of her family’s well-known Cantonese restaurant in Flushing, New York. Each episode highlights how food becomes more meaningful when tied to memory and identity rather than technique alone.
Apple appears committed to expanding this style of programming, with viewers responding to shows that balance warmth, storytelling, and cultural discovery.
As Awkwafina jokes her way through new culinary challenges, the series offers something larger than cooking lessons—it shows how reconnecting with the past can create something entirely new.
