Still image from the second season of Once Upon a Bite features baklava, the renowned Turkish dessert. [Photo provided to China Daily]

Thanks to smash hits like A Bite of China, the 54-year-old Chen has garnered a bunch of TV awards, shooting to fame and accumulating a big fan base, exemplified by nearly 1.9 million fans on Twitter-like Sina Weibo.

Recently, the second season of Once Upon a Bite－which made its debut on the streaming site Tencent Video on April 26－has become an instant hit, notching up 9.3 points out of 10 on the popular review site Douban.

With eight episodes, the sequel revolves around eight themes; sweetness, crabs, chop suey and haslet, chicken, eggs and roes, sauces, sausages and vegetable roots.

The documentary has many mouth-watering close-up shots, varying from king crabs hunted in Norway's icy seas to exquisitely cooked "thousand-layer" pancakes from Yangzhou, East China's Jiangsu province, and spiced goose glittering in the light from South China's Guangdong province.

Within around 16 months, the crew carried out research, polished the script, traveled across 25 countries and regions like the United States, Malaysia and the Philippines, to shoot exotic stories of more than 300 types of delicious food.

But the shooting has yet to be completely finished, as it was halted for around two months by the COVID-19 pandemic, says Chen.

"The microscopic camera team that we cooperate with had purchased microscopes, and used their own kitchens to research the change in food while it is being cooked," he adds.