In the apocalypse, good taste dies last

In the apocalypse, good taste dies last.

Or maybe it survives because it knows how to hide. In cellars and caches. In the stubborn memory of a perfect saucepan.

On “The Last of Us,” Jeffrey Wright’s Isaac Dixon is the hard-edged leader of the Washington Liberation Front, a rebel group fighting the Seraphites, a theocratic cult, for control of post-Cordyceps Seattle. He’s the kind of man who tortures for intel, slowly and with intention. In one scene, he does so in what looks like the husk of a fine dining restaurant. The kitchen is still beautiful — copper pots gleaming like trophies above the range, surfaces clean enough to suggest there’s still someone employed to do closing duties.

Isaac moves through the space like someone who remembers how to cook. As he lights the pilot, he shares a story, not about strategy or vengeance, but about Williams Sonoma.

“You know, when I was a younger man and I wanted to impress a woman, well, you have to know your strengths. And I was kinda shy. I didn’t know how to talk to them. It made me nervous. So, what I would do is cook for them,” he said. “And I was good. Good enough to deserve quality tools, but did I have the money for that? No I did not. I would go into Williams Sonoma. It’s a cookware store, you wouldn’t know. And I would stare at these. Mauviel. Best of the best. French, of course.”

The camera lingers on the pots. On the soft gleam of the stove’s flame. A man sits nearby, naked and bleeding. Isaac barely looks at him.

“I would think, ‘Thirty years to retirement and pension, but one day, I will own a Mauviel saucepan—with lid.’ And I was right. Just not how I planned. The strange benefits of the apocalypse.”

It’s absurd and heartbreaking all at once. A perfect saucepan, finally within reach, but only because the world has ended.

This scene taps into something strangely specific and deeply resonant: the way food — not just for survival, but for pleasure, for aesthetics, for longing — shows up in post-apocalyptic narratives. It’s a genre that has evolved past the blunt-force trauma of zombies and radioactive hellscapes to make room for grief, weirdness and even gourmet moments. Lately, we’ve seen a wave of these stories that stretch the form: the bleak whimsy of “Miracle Workers: End Times,” the stylized anarchy of “Fallout” and the dungeon-crawling culinary joy of “Delicious in Dungeon.”

All of them, in one way or another, ask what it means to still have good taste in terrible times.

In “Fallout” — which, like “The Last of Us,” is based on a long-running video game series — taste becomes a kind of currency. The series takes place centuries after nuclear war turned most of the U.S. into an irradiated wasteland. The surface is now home to scavengers, soldiers, mutants, and ghouls, all doing their best to survive on spoiled food, brackish water, and whatever’s left in long-abandoned vending machines. But underground, in the Vaults—massive bunkers built by the pre-war corporation Vault-Tec—some people live in an eerie simulation of old American life: dinner tables set with linens, government slogans piped through loudspeakers, farms with video-projected sunrises. These Vault dwellers have held onto the dream of "reclamation," believing they’re the ones who will one day reemerge and rebuild society.

Ella Purnell, Michael Emerson and Dale Dickey in "Fallout" (JoJo Whilden/Prime Video)When Maximus, a surface-dwelling soldier, is briefly taken in by the residents of Vault 4, they give him a welcome basket — an actual basket, complete with ribbon. Inside: Sugar Bombs cereal, BlamCo mac and cheese, deviled eggs, caviar, oysters and mixed nuts. It’s absurd. It’s exquisite. And it’s only possible underground, in a place where the apocalypse hasn’t dirtied the tablecloths. For Maximus, who’s spent his life on the surface choking down CRAM and water laced with radiation, it’s a glimpse into a different kind of survival, one that still believes in seasoning. The Vault dwellers may have chin-tentacles and sinister secrets, but they understand something essential.In the post-apocalypse, the ability to feign normalcy — and further, to curate pleasure — is a luxury.

Taste doesn’t just survive. It stratifies.

That same warped logic, where refinement survives disaster but only for those high enough on the post-apocalyptic ladder, shows up in “Miracle Workers: End Times.” In this particular dystopia, civilization has crumbled into a desertscape ruled by petty warlords and scavenger gangs. Yet Morris Rubinstein, Literal Garbage Person (played with slouchy aplomb by Steve Buscemi) has somehow secured himself a “McMansion” — in this case, a refurbished McDonald’s dining room — and an ersatz domestic life.

When he hosts a dinner party for his underlings, it's a tour de force of grotesque aspiration: there’s a holographic Stepford wife, promises to retire to “le ball pit” after dinner and a main course of lovingly fried rat. Even the silverware is stratified. God forbid you mistake the cockroach fork for the rat fork.

It’s easy to sneer at Morris’s antics, but beneath the grotesquery is a real hunger. Not just for food, but for the comfort and control that a good meal can offer. There’s something powerful about the ability to craft pleasure out of scarcity, to insist that delight still matters, even when the world is falling apart.

In The “Last of Us,” Isaac finally gets that Mauviel saucepan, but there’s no civilization left to host a dinner party. In “Delicious in Dungeon,” a ragtag adventuring crew makes hot pot out of man-eating mushrooms. One vision mourns what’s been lost. The other insists: if we must eat monsters, let’s at least get the seasoning right.

Delicious in Dungeon (Netflix)That’s the magic of “Delicious in Dungeon,” which often feels more like a food show than a fantasy epic. The catacombs beneath a crumbling city have cracked wide open, revealing a vast, spiraling dungeon teeming with strange beasts and stranger plants. Rumor has it, a mad mage waits at the bottom and whoever defeats him will inherit a long-lost kingdom. Adventuring parties pour in, lured by gold and glory, but quickly learn that success hinges less on brute strength than on how well you can cook a scorpion.

Of course, the idea of eating monsters takes some getting used to. The dungeon is full of weird, pulsing, half-sentient creatures — more slime than steak. For Marcille, the party’s elven mage, the thought is downright barbaric. Only the exiled, the desperate, or the criminally unsupervised would eat such things, she insists. But hunger has a way of softening one’s principles. And then, they meet Senshi.

Senshi is a dwarf with the demeanor of a kindly prep cook and the obsessive devotion of a Michelin chef. He’s spent a decade living underground, cataloging edible monsters and perfecting his techniques. He doesn’t just tolerate monster cuisine—he reveres it. He skins Walking Mushrooms with care, tosses their stubby feet into a hot pot with an eye for balance and umami. “Lose the butt,” he instructs, like he’s peeling a carrot. “Save the feet and throw ‘em in the pot. They’re delish.”

In these stories, cuisine becomes a kind of spiritual resistance. To cook — well, thoughtfully, indulgently — is to assert that pleasure still matters. That even in the rubble, we deserve more than rations. Senshi doesn’t just feed his party; he steadies them. His recipes are practical, yes, but also tender, precise, almost reverent. And for viewers, they offer a kind of catharsis: a reminder that nourishment isn’t always about need. Sometimes it’s about remembering who we were, or imagining who we still might be.

Somewhere in a sunken kitchen, copper pans still hang above the range. Somewhere, there’s a man who finally got his Mauviel (with lid). And somewhere deeper still, a dwarf is gently stirring hot pot in a dungeon, seasoning monsters like it’s the most natural thing in the world.