About

The Perennial Plate is a two-time James Beard Award winning documentary series and production company with a focus on a more human food system.  Their work has been featured in The Atlantic, The New York Times, Food and Wine Magazine, Saveur, Bon Appetite and their films have been screened at dozens of film festivals.

Season One of the series took place over a calendar year in Minnesota where every Monday for 52 weeks, Daniel Klein and Mirra Fine (husband and wife) released short films about the culinary, agricultural and hunting happenings in their home state. In Season Two, they made weekly videos across America. For Season 3  they traveled  to China, Japan, India, Sri Lanka, Spain, Morocco, Italy, Turkey, Argentina, Mexico, South Africa and Ethiopia.  In Season 4 (with baby in tow), they spent 2 months each in Colorado, Mexico, Ireland and Nova Scotia, documenting a multitude of regional food stories.   Their most recent season took a turn away from food and toward Immigrant stories, taking a compassionate look at American Life in its many forms.

In addition the team creates branded content and commercial works for a variety of clients including: American Express, Vox Media, Slack, Equal Exchange, Capital One, Masienda, Whole Foods and NCGA.

Daniel Klein

After learning to cook at his mother’s bed and breakfast, Daniel went on to work and train at many of the world’s top restaurants.   His culinary education brought him to Spain, France, England, India and New York, where he has worked and trained at top Michelin starred restaurants including The Fat Duck (Heston Blumenthal), St. John (Fergus Henderson), Mugaritz (Andoni Luis Aduriz), Bouchon (Thomas Keller), Applewood (David Shea) and Craft (Tom Collichio).  After graduating from NYU, Daniel also pursued a career in film.  He has directed, filmed, edited and produced projects on various issues including the development industry in Africa ( “What are we doing here?”) and oil politics.  Daniel is an Emmy nominated producer, and a 2013 & 2014 James Beard Award winner and the founder of The Perennial Plate.  His work was most recently featured at AFI Docs, and he has spoken on food and the importance of story at MAD, Harvard and at the UN.

Contact: daniel (at) theperennialplate.com

Mirra Fine

Emmy nominated Graphic Artist and Producer, James Beard Award winning Filmmaker, and Vegetarian, Mirra has never cooked at any fancy restaurants.  However, she has worked at some of New York’s top marketing firms, (including J Walter Thompson and Kirshenbaum Bond), and for the City of New York. She was a graphic designer and cheesemonger before she started filming and co-producing The Perennial Plate series in 2011.  Mirra became a vegetarian as a result of the first episode of the show.

“The Perennial Plate is real food TV, in every sense.” — Michael Pollan

“A level of culinary cinema verité that television can’t (or wouldn’t dare) match.” — Food & Wine Magazine

“Daniel has transformed his love of cooking into a web series that I find both insightful and informative ” — Thomas Keller, the French Laundry