What a viewTuck into HBO Asia’s Food Lore for a glimpse into the life and struggles of the masses

Here’s a novelty: a food show that’s not about cooking, or some condescending, egotistical, white male spatula-swinger.

HBO Asia’s Food Lore is an unorthodox anthology drama series examining relationships as they are shaped by the uniting, divisive, heartening, saddening and even politically charged presence of what we eat.

Eight hour-long episodes visit eight Asian countries, with narrative styles shifting: “Tamarind” (Singapore’s “entry”) follows a struggling single parent trying to earn a crust from his hawker-centre stall. Life for him starts looking up when he meets a disillusioned French chef labouring in her famous chef father’s shadow.

In “Island of Dreams”, we meet Nieves, a relative big shot returning from the Philippine capital, Manila, to her home island for a fiesta and taking a ferry, on which she eats a doughnut that could double as a lifebelt. Alternating parts of the story are narrated by Nieves – a domestic helper – as she looks back on her tough childhood. “I grew up hungry,” she says, having ironically earned her pittance selling sticky desserts on the street. “You’re bound to starve in a brood of five.”

Meanwhile, India’s offering, “A Plate of Moon”, shows the power of a favourite dish in mentally transporting an elderly victim of Alzheimer’s disease back to a place of joy – although the cook herself, deflated and betrayed by circumstance, cannot share in his happiness.

Vietnam, Japan, Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia provide the other settings for a sensuous, multi-flavoured meditation on the influence of something none of us can do without. Food Lore is Singapore filmmaker Eric Khoo’s progeny and can be sampled at 10pm on Sundays on HBO GO and HBO.

A second helping of Midnight Diner: Tokyo Stories