Knife Drop with YouTube Sensation and MasterChef Finalist Nick DiGiovanni

Did you know that at Harvard if there aren't any concentrations you like you can apply to have one created? No, seriously. And that's just one of the interesting things you're going to learn from today's guest. This is Chris spear and you're listening to Chefs Without Restaurants, the show where I speak with culinary entrepreneurs and people working in the food and beverage industry outside of a traditional restaurant setting. This week, my guest is Nick DiGiovanni. Nick was a MasterChef finalist on season 10. By the way, he went on that show while attending Harvard, no small feat there. It's a great story, and I don't want to give too much of it away in the intro here. Since then, he has been creating food and cooking content online. His videos are both educational and funny, often done in collaboration with other celebrities and YouTube personalities. He's made slushies with Mr. Beast, chili with Kevin from the office, and he recently broke the Guinness Book of World Records for the largest Beef Wellington. That video by the way, featured someone you might have heard of Gordon Ramsay. Nick still seems pretty grounded. While grateful for his fans and followers, he says he doesn't get caught up in the numbers on the analytics. Last week, he released his first cookbook, knife drop creative recipes anyone can cook. And of course, we're gonna be talking about that as well. So whether you're a chef, home cook, or one of Nick's 20 million fans, I think you're gonna enjoy this episode. As always, I love connecting with my listeners. The best way to reach me is by finding me on Instagram at Chefs Without Restaurants, and my DMs are always open. And all I ask is that if you enjoy the show, please share it with a friend. And the show is made possible with the support of my sponsors. This week's episode is brought to you by the United States personal chef Association and hire a chef. Are you a personal chef looking for support and growth opportunities? Look no further than the United States personal chef association with nearly 1000 members across the US and Canada. USPCA provides liability insurance certification lead generation and more. Consumers can trust that their meal experience is insured and supported by USPCA. And now for a limited time, save $75 on new membership and get your premier listing on hire chef by using the code TaxBreak 2023 at uspca.com Plus, if you have products or services to sell chefs and their clients showcase your business on hireachef and USPCA websites with our great introductory packages. To learn more about membership advertising or partnership opportunitie, call Angela at 1-800-995-2138. Extension 705 or email aprather@uspca.com. Hey Nick. welcome on the show. Thanks so much for coming on.

Chris. Thank you for having me.

I'm looking forward to talking to you today. I'm maybe not even as excited as my kids are my kids actually have been watching your channel. I mean, I'm excited. Don't take it the wrong way. But I have 11 year old twins and my son in particular dreams of being a YouTuber, he hasn't figured out what that means to him yet, like what he's gonna do? Yeah. knows, I'm sure you get that a lot, right.

I feel like that is the new big dream job. I've heard it from a lot of teachers believe it or not.

Yeah, I mean, you can go deep into these things. It's crazy. Like my printer stopped working a couple of weeks ago. And I just like went on YouTube and Google the model of my printer. And like someone suggested, Hey, have you like flipped it upside down and looked at the door underneath? Maybe something jammed? And wouldn't you know, there was a pencil in there. Like, I never would have even thought that and someone took the time to make a video as to how to like unclog your printer. That's what I love about YouTube as you can find anything. But if if you want to learn how to cook, I mean, me. I went to culinary school, I graduated in 98. And like, we barely just had the internet. I think, you know, when I graduated, I had only had the internet for two years. And now I think you could sit at home and learn so much. You can

do it all YouTube has something for everyone. It's true. You can find the most obscure topics and there's somebody out there that has learned it better than most people in the world and he's just excited to share what they know about it. And I find that so fascinating.

You recently crossed the 10 million subscriber mark with I think more than 5 billion total views. That's that sounds insane to me and more than 11 million Tik Tok followers. So we're like, I don't even know. Incredible is maybe the best word but I'm still at a loss for words. How's that feel to you?

Exciting is the simplest way to put it. At the same time. It doesn't really change much for me if that makes sense. Because I am still making videos that I think will excite people that I love to make myself and to a certain extent the number of subscribers there. It's fantastic. It's It's exciting. It's great to have them all there. But the reality is I have to keep making good videos anyway, or it doesn't really matter regardless, so I haven't thought of it too much. And some people are surprised to hear that but you know, it's a number and I more care about the actual people behind those numbers and the the people that I want to teach to cook, right. So that's my concern is just making sure I continue to create top quality videos, the best that they can be videos that I'm going to enjoy, and I'm not going to get burnt out on making. And, you know, I sort of forget about that number sometimes.

And, you know, I think one of the things is, it's really easy to become popular for one video or one style, and then just go all in on that, but then you're only doing that thing, whether it be making like a viral pizza dish, and now you're making pizza everyday, like you have a lot of variety to your channel, which I think is really cool. Yeah,

I think it's fun to it's fun for me. And it's fun for others to explore, and to try new things. And I don't want to get caught up in one specific region of, of cuisine or type of food all the time, I want to keep learning and I want to, I want to be able to cook anything, and I'm still learning, sometimes you will not realize that or think about that I'm still learning to

when I think about like what I was doing at your age, it was nowhere near the things you've accomplished. And we're gonna, like, I want to talk about so much of that. I think a great place to start is college because you have a really interesting story. You went to Harvard. Harvard is not usually known for being a culinary school. So can you talk to me a little bit about what, you know, why did you go to Harvard? What were you thinking you're going to do when you went

there? Well, the reality is, I felt very fortunate to even get accepted. And that was the first step. And I hit it was hard to say no, I think once I was accepted. And nowadays, I mean, college is ridiculously hard to get into anywhere, it doesn't matter where you're applying. It's very, very competitive. It's very difficult. And so I look at it as a bit of a crapshoot. Sometimes, once I got in, I sort of felt like, Okay, this is a place that I can probably go and whatever my dreams might be, which I didn't know at the time, I could hopefully have a good shot at achieving some of them here. And so I went. And that's when I kind of came to this realization that I had absolutely no idea what I wanted to do.

I can't imagine going to Harvard not knowing what I wanted to do. That seems really scary. To me.

It is, but I also looked at college as a place that you could hopefully go and get, it would guide you in the right direction, right. And I don't know how most people approach college or think about it when they're headed there. I'm sure there are a variety of motions and things that go into people's minds. But it was very unexpected, all of it. And it was very, I guess I took every opportunity there. And I just sort of ran with it. And I've done that my entire life just sort of seeing things as they come and try to figure out what the best next step forward is. So when I'm asked, What do I want to do in three years, and in five years, I often don't have a good answer to that because it was the same back in college. And as it is now. I take things usually day by day.

Well, I think things change so much like, for example, YouTube, when I was a kid when I was in college, like it didn't even exist. So you would never say I want to be a YouTuber like there was no concept. Right now I work as a personal chef cooking in people's homes. And I have a podcast and neither of those were things like maybe there were private chefs. But they weren't thing. So you know, people say to my kids, like, what do you want to be? And they talked about things they're interested in. But the reality is, my kids are 11 by the time they're 1821, what they're doing might not even be a career right now.

It's very interesting how fast the world is changing?

Well, what did you did you have to declare a major when you like, went to Harvard, like you must have had some idea why you were going there and to say, like, not a culinary school or not to be a plumber. Like, what What were you thinking kind of when you entered school?

Yeah, I remember being stuck in somewhat of a weird rut. I didn't know what I wanted to do at all. I loved food. I always knew that. And I always have known that. But at the same time, food wasn't so much as you sort of hinted at something that I could necessarily pursue in a traditional way at Harvard. And so I remember looking at lots and lots of concentrations, lots of majors trying to figure out what could I pick, and I could not pick anything, I simply couldn't find one that I actually enjoyed, or that seemed to fit authentically with me. It's hard to make something last that you're not going to actually enjoy, right? We all learned that at some point in some way. And so I just couldn't pick anything and that's when I had to start looking at other options. The question was, how would I go about doing what I loved and doing Something with food while at Harvard.

So you decided what anyone would do? You just went to them and said, I want to create my own course here, right?

Yeah, they have the option listed on the list of concentrations, it's called a special concentration. It's basically you create your own major. But the reality is there's when I was there, at least, there were probably six or seven kids in the entire school. And so that's, you know, that's, that's nothing that nobody is actually successful in, in achieving that and getting the school to agree that of all the 49 majors that they have listed, you can you need to be able to create this special one for yourself to be able to, you know, use your time best at when at school, right? It just, it's very, very hard to convince them that one of the ones they have existing is not going to fulfill what you need. And so the real challenge was yes, once I set on doing the special Major, the real challenge was, I have to now convince the school, which was not easy. What made

you think that you were going to be able to do that? I mean, it just seems huge. I would never even think, you know, I went to a culinary school, I would not even think about saying like, Hey, you don't have a foods of Africa class, you should do that, you know, just like one class, but to go to what's arguably one of the most, if not the most prestigious universities in this country and just say, you don't have anything here for me, really, I think you should have this course. And this is, and this is how you're going to do it. I mean, that's, that's huge. I don't want to downplay that. I think that's a huge accomplishment. So talk a little bit about how did that, like, what did you have to do to make that happen?

So it was absolutely not just me. And if it was just me, it would not have happened. So it really came down to getting a bunch of professors on my side, I basically built a team, I had to build a full group of people who believed in this and who wanted to help me and would stick their necks out to help me convince the school that this should be approved. And it was rejected the first time. And that was after months and months and months of preparing documents and writing up essays and papers and statements from these professors. And, and by the way, these professors were from all across campus, they were from different different types of classes. You know, one was in the environmental sciences one was in, they had some not culinary classes, but they had some classes that had covered topics and food in them. So these professors are from all over the place. And it was rejected, which that was tough, because suddenly it made me turn back and have to look once again at that list of majors that I really did not want to do. But we just revised our application, we made another push, I think we had to wait a semester to do it again, or something like that. I'm guessing they just make it this difficult, because they want to really, really make sure that you you need to do this you want to do this is the only thing that you want to do. But I didn't even I didn't even bat an eye I just we adjusted our application, we tried to make it even stronger. pushed it again. And and it was approved.

So from that point, how long did it take for it to become a program that you could, you know, take classes. And

so when I was approved for this special major, it didn't mean that other people on campus can now take this, I guess some Yeah, it was just me, I guess someone could have taken note and said, Oh, you know, this would be a fun, this, this would be fun to try. I'm gonna try to do this as well. But what I did notice that was really cool was that they made a Class A few years after I left called food in the environment. And so that to me, says that they they may have seen, okay, we have a little bit of a gap here. Someone made a special major in this and you know, they were able to justify that it wasn't quite there but that we had the infrastructure for it. And now they have a class so I'm gonna guess that if I now was there as a student and I applied, they would just say go take that class and then figure something else out.

That's really cool. And during that time, you also ended up on MasterChef season 10 right you're you're still in school when you're doing that right.

Yeah, so Master Chef ended up being around my towards the end of my college experiences my senior year and I just that that was that was a funny little thing I would happen I was just walking through a hallway saw a flyer somewhere they must have been gone rammed his face or something like that. And which which will catch your eye if you're into food of course and, and I just figured why not give it a shot. Have you watched the show? I had watched some episodes. I don't think I've gone through a full season or anything like that, but I've certainly seen it online.

So you thought I'm gonna try this Master Chef thing. And what what did you think the likelihood was that you're going to end up on the show? Were you really confident saying yeah, I think I've got a shot or was it kind I have a dream shot for you.

Well, you know, what's ironic is that there was another Harvard student a few seasons before. So I figured there was absolutely 00 chance that I would ever get even considered, just because I feel like, you know, if there's going to be so many college kids around the country that apply, what are the odds that they actually take another Harvard student just a couple of years later. So that had already been news on campus that this one kid had done it, and I knew about it, but I still sort of figured why not right, I had nothing to lose. And as I said, I was really, truly trying to chase down everything in food that I possibly could while on campus, I maximized my time at school by doing as much with food as I possibly could. So this was another thing to give it a shot.

So at that point, were you cooking like, were you cooking for a job while you're in college? Like, where was your cooking experience coming from? Or was it just self taught things that you learned growing up? And you were, you know, reading recipes and cookbooks and looking online? How were you? How did you know how to cook well enough to go on MasterChef?

Initially through family, then a little bit later, I worked at a restaurant. The summer before college started, that was my first true restaurant gig. And then in college, yes, I did have a restaurant job that I would go to a couple of nights a week. And that was the most legitimate restaurant job that I've had, I ended up making good amount of money for how long I worked there, I was running one of the better stations in the restaurant, down my further down the line there. And my time there, I think once I built up trust with the chef and that kind of thing. So it really, it was a really, really great way for me to learn how to cook at a more professional level while otherwise, you know, being at a school that just of course, had no culinary background at all.

And you did really well. You went on to what third place?

Yes. And in third place.

That's amazing. What did you learn about yourself, being on the show, like going through that process?

I'm really into the idea of fearlessness in the kitchen. That's the big word that I talk about all the time, it's in my cookbook, I cannot stop talking about how you need to be fearless in the kitchen. And, you know, Chris, you probably would agree. Again, you've done a sort of similar path and the that unique path and food that most people don't have. And I think it's all about just having fun with food. And I'm sure you'd agree with that. And not taking things too seriously. Because I think that has happened in the past with food a lot of times and you know, you can make great food without taking it too seriously. So that's the really big thing that I feel I took away from MasterChef was just the the idea of fearlessness.

I don't understand why people are so fearful, you know, it's funny, like I grew up, and household, my mom cooked all the time, I got my love of cooking from her. But she was 100% like recipe driven, right? So if we're gonna make this recipe tonight, and she doesn't have bell peppers, we're just like not making it there was it wasn't even a consideration to leave it out or sub something, right? And I see that day to day I go in people's houses, and I cook dinners for them. And they talk about like, oh, I don't think I could make that like, and I keep telling people what's the worst that could happen. You're gonna try this dish. It doesn't work out. Big deal. It's just like a dinner at home tonight. Like, but I think people are paralyzed people are afraid to cook for me. Do you ever hear that from people like, Oh, I'm so scared to cook for you. It's like, why are you scared to cook for me? I'm just a normal person.

Yeah, I have I have. The funniest times for me have been. I've been on trips before I was in Italy one time. And I was at some restaurant. And I guess one of the guys there at the restaurant had seen some videos or whatever knew something about my background. And he said he came up to the table and said that he was really, really nervous. And then he'd been nervous ever since he saw the reservation, I must have made the reservation or something. And I started laughing and I I pretty much just, you know, I started laughing with with him. And I was so confused at the same time because I was like, What? What are you talking about? I'm sitting here, I'm all excited to eat. Why would you ever be nervous? Just cook your own food? You're clearly fantastic at it. I'm not, you know, so I think I think it is funny when people think that way. You should also be cooking for yourself in a sense, right? I mean, if you're, if you're cooking with love, then you're going to cook good food if you're cooking with that love and fearlessness that I think is is the most important in the kitchen. It's going to be great.

What I really think is fantastic is I feel like you're connecting to I'm sure you know what your audience demographics are some somewhat but like a younger generation, which to me is amazing. Like my kids are more interested in watching your cooking videos than someone who in my mind is more well known. You know, like I'm gonna sit and watch maybe like an hour long Masimo but Torah like masterclass my kids want to like watch your stuff. And I think that's great because, you know, for me it was like PBS when I was really young and then there are early days of Food Network, so whatever is getting people engaged, and it doesn't have to be kids, I mean, I think your videos are funny. I think you're doing approachable recipes. So that might also be for a home cook, who's maybe just starting their journey. Like, for me whatever it takes to get people interested in cooking, eating new foods, trying new things. So I'm really happy to see this new wave of, you know, people on social media and YouTube and stuff making videos, because I think it's great. It's interesting, because, you know, I've like a foot in both of those worlds. And I know a lot of like, restaurant chefs don't see a lot of people on YouTube, like, they seem as like YouTube chefs, and not real chefs. And I'm using air quotes here. Because I hear that a lot as someone who talks to exclusively non restaurant chefs, what's your feedback been from people in the professional food world?

You know what I'd say? I think there's a shift happening now with that last part that you mentioned, I have become quite close with a number of chefs that, frankly, I've looked up to for a lot of my life. And now I think they realize that there's actually something here with the idea of what we were talking about before, with kids getting really excited about food and cooking. There's no reason for there to be any sort of tension between a really well trained restaurant chef, and someone that's making food and cooking videos online. There can be collaboration, there should definitely be that kind of back and forth, check to make sure that okay, yeah, you could, you know, you could have done this better, you could, but, but and that's totally fine. I think all that that collaborative type of thing is great. That's, that's what makes things better. And that'll help to make everything better. But I think there's a shift happening. I think people realize now that people want to watch food videos online, people want to learn recipes, and sometimes a quick 32nd 35 second video, as opposed to sitting down to watching a 30 minute 45 minute TV special, I don't think they have to be mutually exclusive. But I think there's a shift happening. And I've, I've recently more recently sort of seen this newfound respect at times from some of these chefs that we're talking about, who realize, you know, there's room for everybody.

And we're gonna talk about your cookbook a little later in the show. But just while we're on this topic, you've had some great chefs contribute recipes to your book, one of my favorite chefs is Ken oranger. You know, I'm a Massachusetts guy. So he's like the best tomato. I say the best meal I've ever had in my life was at Toro, Jamie best. And that's also someone I love and having a meal, there was just amazing.

I'm so happy to hear that. You know what the second year we're talking about restaurant chefs and that kind of thing. Ken is the first person who popped into mind, I woke up this morning. And the very first text I saw on my phone was, hey, when you come back to Boston, I'm on my book tour right now. And he said, hey, when you come back to Boston, I got a bottle of champagne waiting for you. Because he was all excited about the cookbook. And for me, that's such an amazing, exciting thing, because he's the chef that, you know, he, he has restaurants around the world, but especially in Boston, there are a lot of my favorite places to go in the city. And I've always looked up to him, as somebody who is just so creative with food has achieved so much in the food space. Yeah, we've become close friends. And I love what he does. And I really think he appreciates what I do as well. So it's a perfect example of that relationship. And that shift that I feel like I'm starting to see.

And he just put out a cookbook with his daughter, which I think is fantastic. You know, yeah. Well, we'll get back into the cookbook, obviously. But like, let's talk about the content. When did you start a YouTube channel? And what like, why were you doing it when you started? What was the purpose? Was it just going to be kind of messing around for fun? Did you think from the onset, like, I want to educate people talk me through the starting of your YouTube channel.

It was another place for me to share. I sometimes feel as if you can get very caught up in all the different social media apps, there's Tik Tok, there's Instagram, there's YouTube, there's Snapchat. And there are too many times, right? It's hard to manage them all. And it gets a little bit stressful. And sometimes, you know, I wish there was just one easy place that we could all go and do all the different things that we do. And you want to have to have 25 apps on your phone. But obviously, that's not how it is and YouTube I looked at as a place that I might be able to experiment with some slightly longer format videos. Because again, as I said before, I don't think the longer TV episodes that people grew up watching on the Food Network and on TV have to be completely fizzled away, and that this new wave of short form 35 second videos is going to come replace it. I don't think that's what's going to happen at all. So I wanted to experiment with some longer videos and see if that could be a different outlet for me to just teach and share.

Do you have to have a team like for someone who let's say I've not put any content out but I'm thinking yeah, like I want to put videos out there. It's a little daunting because so many people now the production values are so high. It almost seems like you need to have someone shooting your camera, shooting your video. What if it's just me right like my wife goes to work. My kids are at school. I'm here by myself and I want to make videos. Is it possible to make like good videos by myself? And to that point, like when you started where people helping you? And if not like, what point did someone come on to be your cameraman, I know you have someone working with you and a whole team now. But

I initially started out with the shorter form content, just doing it all myself. Believe it or not, the only thing that that I tried to get help on for that now is some of the editing, I started just filming myself running back and forth to the camera. And then taking all that footage off myself editing it all myself in uploading it all myself. And I, to this day, still do all the filming for the short stuff by myself, I just like it that way. And it keeps me more comfortable. And just, you know, I like that creativity, I like changing the camera, the camera angles, I like messing around with the settings, I just, I really enjoy it. And I don't want to lose touch with that. So I still do all of that. But someone helps with the editing of the shorter stuff. Now, then, of course, on the other side, YouTube is this sort of bigger, totally different beast, where you do have to have some help most of the time, especially for food and cooking, where I think it's very important to have different angles, you have to pick up all the sounds, there's a lot of things there that you need to you need to really nail for it to be a good video. And so you know, I've got my camera guy who I've been working with for years and years now, Manny, and then we have, we have a fantastic editor, Brandon, who just he's got a gift, when he looks at all this footage, he's got this gift where he can just pull it together does amazing, enjoyable experience. And so yes, you do need you do need a team, the team is much bigger than that there are more people that help plan the videos, there's quite a few things. But in terms of just that difference between the shorter form stuff now and the longer form stuff you do need, depending on what type of videos you're making, you certainly need though.

So with like the longer form stuff, how long would you say and I know the videos are dramatically different. But how long does it take start to finish? Like from conception to finishing editing? Considering, you know, whoever's doing that for you? How long would you say it would take to do a video? Like if you made a 10 minute video for YouTube? How long do you think that 10 minutes actually takes to put out one really great piece of content?

It completely varies based on what we're doing. The most recent one took about six or seven months, because it was a Guinness World Record. And we did it with for Ramsey. That's good. Yeah, it was all the dates, we had to do multiple different shoot days. So that one took three different days of filming. And then yeah, a lot of different people because that would involve the health inspector. And again, it's rapid and Gordon's team it was so that was that was a longer one, of course. But then I can go and rate fast food menu items and get in the car with my camera guy Manny, after I call him at, you know, nine in the morning. And we confirm that we're filming that that day, and spend three hours driving through drive thrus all day, and it takes us you know, a couple hours and then the editing time so it totally totally depends.

We can't gloss over the fact that you won a world a Guinness Book World Record with Gordon Ramsay, that's like you're just kind of mentioned that offhandedly. But that that's crazy. And it was really

fun. That was really exciting. Those are fun projects for me, because they're challenging. They do take some time. And we failed them before. And it's expensive. And it's really, really a bummer if you fail one because you just you've had all those people help out, you've got you know, you've got all this footage, you've done everything and then you fail the record. So it's happened to us before and that was tough, but they're so so rewarding. If you pull them off, and you get that same feeling. You get that same feeling that you got, if you're on I don't know, let's say your school sports team and you and you score the game winning goal or somebody does and everyone's celebrating together. It's something like that, that's hard to describe that just keeps me going with those. It's just a huge, huge team effort to pull them all together. And when you pull it off, it's it's, as you said, it's a big deal. It's a world record. It's an exciting thing. So we love we just love doing them.

Just pick up the phone call Gordon and say hey, like I'm thinking about this thing. Let's do it, right. Yeah, that video. I know, Max was in the video help it you know, you brought on other sets of hands. Right? Yeah, do that. So that's one of the interesting things is there seems to be so much synergy between content creators, not just in the food world, but it seems like all these people run in circles. How important is that to you to you know, have a group of people to rely on bounce ideas off of being each other's videos, is it seems like that's something you enjoy is kind of collaborating so cute talking about collaborations a little bit.

I love collaborations that goes right off that aspect of being on a team and, and a team as a whole and kind of how all the how all the functions of a team work. Really. Collaborations, to me are one of the best ways to keep things fresh, keep things moving forward. Keep things exciting. You can learn so much. I always take away at least you know at least One new little tip tip or trick in the kitchen, at the very least when I when I am working with someone new, it's just exciting. And it's fun. And I also think it's so interesting for people online to who are watching who are excited to see these videos, to suddenly see these two people interact because everyone interacts in such different ways. So even I get really excited when I see two new people that I, you know, I might know both of them. But doing something for the first time because it's always so unexpected, and you're just looking for all those little fun nuances, the little jokes that happen, you know, sometimes maybe there's some awkwardness, it just, it can be different every time and it's very exciting.

Everyone loves a good crossover. My kids were watching one of your videos, and I said, Hey, I know that got you know, someone from another video. Of course, you know, I guess so. You know, Mr. Beast, now I kind of know you. So I guess I'm like only two degrees of separation from Mr. Beast, right? Which I guess makes me like the coolest dad in the neighborhood. I pretty much thinks my kids don't care about anyone else. I know. I've talked to really amazing people. But like, now I know a guy who knows Mr. Beast. So there you go. Yeah, I mean, I think collabs are so important. And for me, it helps with like, I talked about loneliness a lot like I was running a kitchen where I had 100 people working there. And then like, I go start a personal chef business. overnight. I have no employees, no one to work with. I'm creating content in my kitchen alone. I'm you know, cooking for guests. It's like I just wanted to build a network, like Chefs Without Restaurants is not just a podcast. It's a network of independent chefs. And it's mostly you know, for the support system so we can bounce ideas off each other talk to each other. I love collab pop ups. Last month, I drove I live in the DC area, and I got in my car and drove up to New Jersey and did a collab pop up with a friend just because we wanted to cook together because we like each other. You know, I think that's so cool.

So much fun. It's one of the it's one of my favorite things to do. And it's it's one of the things that I really think keeps the food industry as a whole moving forward. It's, it's it's a way to make things new and exciting. It really is.

And now you have a new cookbook out what was it? Let's say did drop yesterday. I don't even know what day of the week it is. Yeah, just came out Thursday, June 15. Yeah, dropped on June 13. Sharp it on Tuesday.

i By the way, I learned this. I didn't know books. Release on Tuesdays. That wasn't I didn't know that.

cookbook fan. Like most chefs like wait, it's like, Ooh, what to what's coming out next Tuesday. It's gonna be like five bucks. I'm gonna drop 200 bucks on Tuesday.

No, I never I truly can say I never it was it was a fun new fact for me to learn that books release on Tuesdays. I thought that was cool.

Well, there's a 1000s. Probably millions of cookbooks out there already. Right? So What compelled you to write one? I'm sure. It's a, you know, a huge task and undertaking. So what made you decide you want to put together a cookbook?

I've learned so much. I've dedicated virtually my entire life to learning about food as someone like you have as well. I really think that yes, there are so many cookbooks out there. Could you buy them all and learn all these different things? And you know, you totally could, and is there going to be overlapping? In every cup of tea that's ever been written? I'm sure there is right food is food. And there's a certain list of fundamentals that are always going to be there. But I do feel as if I can offer this unique perspective on food. I approach food with this appetite to always learn and to stay creative. And again, I've spent so much time learning from so many different people that I just feel I have this, I like to look at it as a food journey, right? I have this unique food path food journey throughout my life that nobody else has. I know that for a fact, right? And so no matter what I'm gonna have these unique insights and experiences that I can share with other people that no one else, no one else out there in the world can share. That's the reality of it all. And so, again, I think it is interesting, because you bring up a fair point that there are so many books out there and there, there have got to be so many overlaps. And it's like, at a certain point, you really need another cookbook. But I would say, yes, I think you can learn, you can learn so much. And being somebody who has dedicated his life to learning. I feel I have so much to offer.

When you touched on the storytelling that even if you didn't use the word storytelling, you know, it's an execution. And yeah, I use, for example, like art, you go to an art gallery, and you just look at a painting and especially as you get an abstract stuff, like if you don't read the thing, you're just like, I don't know, like, it's okay, what am I looking at? And then you read it in the description and what the artist meant and what he put into it. And you're like, oh, and it makes the painting so much more impactful. And I think cookbooks are the same way. Like, it could just be a recipe on a page and it's like, oh, great, it's another you know, Smashburger recipe or what Ever. But then, if you've got the header with a story or you know your introduction, it really goes a long way into kind of letting the reader know who you are.

Yeah, I really think that everyone has such a different food journey. And I always like to say that you can learn something from anybody in the world about food that you didn't know you can, they can share an experience that they had a long time ago, they can share it, it makes me think a little bit of that, of that scene in Ratatouille. Where is it Anton ego, the kind of evil mean food critic, yeah, at the end, who you get that flashback at the end, where he suddenly he tastes the ratatouille and he remembers, he remembers his mom giving him this as a kid. And I just that, that, it gives me chills watching it and thinking about it, and just that memory for him. And when his eyes and his face light up. And that feeling, you know, you can share things like that with other people, you can just you can go into depth describing it and I get excited about that kind of thing.

And your recipes, you know, they're all for the most part recipes people have some foundational understanding for and I think it's important to have some some of it a reference point, like, I do like to make truly unique dishes that are my own. But at some point, it needs to be a callback to something right, like I think it's, it helps the person decide what they're going to make. Sometimes you look through a book and you're like, I don't know what any of this is, I don't know what any of these ingredients are, I'm not going to make it but then you might see a quiche recipe or chicken wing recipe, and you have some idea of what that's going to be but then you look at and you're like, oh, there's like an interesting little twist there. So I think that, you know, in my opinion is beneficial to someone who's maybe going to pick up a book and try some of these recipes.

I did my very best to keep this book as approachable and as accessible as possible. And my overall thinking on it is, you know, it's got that foundational, you know, front section where you can go in there and you can, depending on your background and food, of course, you can go in there. And you can learn in a very, very simple and straightforward way how to do those sort of basic things, whether it's brown butter, or caramelized onions, and you can skim through those if you feel like you're you know, you don't, if you're already that way past that, go ahead and skim through that part. But I think it's really important that once you learn those, you then just go off and you do your own thing. And you use your own creative spin on things. You don't follow anything to a tee in my in my cookbook, or anybody's out there, do your own thing, use it as a reference, use it as a guide. And do your own thing after that, because everyone is going to appreciate food in a totally different way.

I'm a big fan of teaching techniques, not recipes. But I think one of the innovative things is the use of QR codes in this book, you're the second person, I'd pyland on my show, she does Thai cooking, and she has a new cookbook. And similarly, I think that's awesome the way you're bringing it together. So for those who haven't seen the book yet or don't know I'm talking about, can you talk a little bit about the QR codes and how they work in your book.

I love the QR code aspect. It's something where you know, if you're confused on this recipe, you can go ahead and you can scan this QR code. And I'll show you that really simple. Simplified, I should say technique in a matter of 15 or 20 seconds. So let's say you're trying to roll a burrito. That's an easy example. If you're getting a little bit used by the by the writing, which can be confusing, it's you can put things in words, but it can sometimes be hard to, then you literally can scan this code and in seconds, you're looking at a very simple top down view of me rolling a burrito. And you can just have your hands, follow my hands and have it right next to you. So I love the idea of sort of combining all those different things, video, regular, you know, pen to paper cookbook, you follow the written instructions. It's a nice combination where you can pick and choose, you can take it or leave it. But I feel it's really helpful for some of those finer techniques.

And I think that's why people gravitate towards YouTube for so many reasons in the first place. Because a lot of people are visual learners. I think learning something that you've never learned, like I've talked about a pig's head like I have tons of books on butchering. I wanted to butcher a pig's head. I've read the books, but I went to YouTube and Chris Cosentino he had back in the day had put together like an aid video before he did like long form. There were like eight three minute clips step by step of like how to butcher a pig's head. And that really helped me learn as opposed to just reading this book on butchering it was visually seeing it. So I think this is going to be something that's going to be more commonplace in cookbooks as we go forward. But it seems like you're early on the game. So kudos to you.

I agree. I do think we'll see more. And thank you. i i I will also tell you, I didn't think of the idea on my own. As you said there are a few cookbooks that are starting to sprinkle out. I don't know who thought of it first. I'm thinking it was probably in line with the whole era of restaurants having QR codes and the tables and that sort of thing. And it actually makes such perfect sense. It's so crazy to me that someone didn't do this earlier on because It worked. So well.

I was just featured in a book, someone wrote a book about chefs. And I think there was 50 stories from 50 chefs. And instead of putting everyone's bio, just the back page, he listed all the chefs with a QR code to each one of them. And when you scanned it and went to each person's and whether it be their website or their bio page, I thought that was really neat. Instead of loading up the book with just bios of 50 chefs, you can just scan the code for each one if you want to learn more and, and then it goes right to my website, like how cool is that if someone's reading a book and my names in there, they might not check me out, but to scan a QR code and go to my website, awesome,

really smart. I'm so happy that that people are using utilizing QR codes and these fun, new creative ways because to me, there are a few better applications than putting them in cookbook.

I will say, if I was asked what my like last meal on Earth would be, it'd be Rhode Island style calamari and I feel like you You missed the boat a little bit by not putting that recipe in there you went with a squid ink or more of a like a cherry pepper, pepper balm, lemon garlic butter, but now I do love calamari. I mean, that's, that's one of my favorite things to eat in the world.

I'll tell you right now that if I was going to sit down for plate of perfect calamari, my go to would probably be classic hot tub, either hot or cold. Actually, sometimes it depends on the weather outside. It depends. Sometimes I like the contrast. And I like hot calamari with that nice cold marinara or out Aviat or whatever you want to use, right? I think this one in the cookbook that has the sort of squirting aoli it's fun. And it looks beautiful, right? It's creative, right? You're using every part of the squid a little bit of the squinting to put it in there and make this kind of darker black aoli to go with it. But I agree. It's very, very hard, oftentimes to be the original, the classic, the OG thing in food, it's hard.

I was gonna say how did you go about picking the recipes for your book? I'm sure there was a huge arsenal to draw from where did you start with that?

I looked a lot at every little thing that I have from my past and food, right, I had notes on my phone that I've taken while eating at restaurants. traveling around the world. I looked at all the different notes that I'd taken while at MasterChef I looked at all the recipes that I'd saved from grandparents and family members, I had tabs saved on my computer have different videos I'd watched and different different recipes I'd seen over the years, I pretty much looked at every little possible thing, and piece of food related or cooking related knowledge that I've ever come across. And then I just tried to distill it all down into 256 pages. That's the reality.

That's hard. It's like picking a favorite child, although maybe picking like 50 of your favorite children. Yeah, it is hard. What about the decision to include recipes from other chefs? Because that's not something you commonly see, there's a lot of fully collaborative cookbooks where it's all recipes from different chefs. And then most people just do their own. Why include, you know, a handful of recipes from other chefs?

Well, you know, I've tasted some really, really great things over the years. And sometimes a food or a recipe is perfect. It's, it's perfect for me at least again, I really believe that everyone tastes in such a different way. And so that's why I say don't follow recipes to a tee. But there's a certain point in time where you make something and it's really hard to make it any better. That's that's the truth. 100% There were some of these recipes that I thought about from my past or looked at or remembered having where I just said, you know, I, I would be so grateful if this person would let me share this with the rest of the world, I'm not going to change it, I'm going to give them full credit. And I want a section where I can share these, these perfect bytes that I've had over the years. And I

think giving credit is so important. Something I love seeing like you do, because we've all picked up a cookbook or watched the video where someone does something and they haven't mentioned it and you don't have to I don't always do. But you're like, oh, wow, I know, they didn't you know, that's not their technique. So seeing like, oh, Kenji, you know, did this or so and so did that. Like, it's nice to just kind of say, yeah, obviously, I'm not the one who came up with this, this person really has this great technique. And I'm using it here. And I love seeing that in content. I tried to do as much as I can again, like we can't do it all the time. Right. Like every time you do something you Brian something. It's not like, well, I got this from this person. But I do think it's nice to kind of give a shout out to those who have, you know, generously shared their info with others.

Yeah, yeah. As you're, as you're noting, I, I if there's anything I've picked up a bit of if there's anything or anyone that I remember, picking up a bit of inspiration from I make sure to, to note it in one of those blurbs at the top of the recipe or whatever it may be. And that's helpful too. Because, you know, if someone likes that little tip from Kenji, let's say they can go back and look at some of his other stuff if they feel like that's a really cool and fun thing that's up their alley. So I think it is important. The reality with food too is you know, As you and I both know, you can't really go and trademark recipe. But it's good to it's good to give credit because people think of new techniques and people think of things all the time. And even though you can't trademark recipe, it is sometimes pretty obvious anyways, we all know who thought of certain things in food. And that's just how that's just how it is.

So like, right now I'm seeing everyone doing, you know, the lace, right. And like in the pan like that, I think it was like the art Zack thing. You know, it's like, everyone's doing that now, at some points, like, Oh, can we just like maybe move on to something new right now. So you're out on the road promoting this book? What's that, like, I know, you're just getting underway.

It's great. It's, it's so much fun meeting all these different people that, that have these nice messages to share with me as well. Our demographic is it leans young, which I love. My whole entire goal with a lot of this is to teach more kids to cook and just get them inspired about food and cooking. So I've had people walk up to me and say that they started a, that they just started college, they were going into finance, and they've taken a complete 180 and are going to culinary school. Now we're working in a restaurant on the side, I've had other kids who, you know, well, I'm surprised or even frankly, just by seeing them, I'm surprised they're even old enough to be to be reading it and understanding some of the stuff and they're telling me that they love cooking already, and that they're they want to be a chef. So it's so exciting to meet all these people, it really is. And it's a lot for sure. I mean, it's a lot to meet so many people in such a condensed amount of time. But it's also just so exciting. And I there's something about it that even though I should probably be tired, I'm not and I just love it. The reality for me with all this is that I don't care so much where it is where I'm going, you know what the city is, I I just get so excited meeting all these people and finally seeing face to face, somebody who has changed. And they're so excited to tell me that they've changed your show me. People have pictures on their phones that this pesto pasta they made. And some of these kids are eight or nine years old, and they're showing me this homemade pasta with some pesto on top. It's impressive.

And I think it's also great because, you know, when I think 20 plus years ago, when I want to get in the food world, it was not something that was really encouraged. I think by parents, you know, it's kind of like if you weren't smart enough to get into like, an academic college or you didn't have anything else like sure you could go on food night, I did well in high school, but I think my parents were kind of like, I don't know, it's tough, you're not gonna get paid well, like why do you want to do this. And now just seeing kids at such a young age get really interested in it, the hopefully they can even be showing their parents not that you need parental validation. But you know, to show that they're actually interested in this and that they could make a career. And there's so many more options. Now I'm just really excited about the future for the culinary world because it's again, I think it's great.

Me too. And it's going to bring all this new excitement. And it's going to bring all these new ideas, and it's going to continue to change in a really fun way. So I too am looking forward to just watching what happens as this next generation of of home cooks and young chefs rises up, because it'll be really exciting to see what they what they create.

And you've talked about creation started your own product lines. Osmo salt, you talking about the Osmo? Salt? Yeah, yeah,

so Osmo I was struggling for a while with this concept that I was making all these videos online. So many people around the country and around the world were able to watch them, but they weren't able to taste anything. And food is very visual, but it's also food. And at a certain point, you want to eat it. Right? So I just wanted to think of a fun way where, you know, how can I create something that I've really been a part of that I can share with as many people as possible that even if it's something as small as salt, which is salt, but at the same time, you need salts, food doesn't taste right without it. And so salt to me seemed like the perfect thing to do here. I wanted to create something that people could try. And again, similarly to you know, some some of these younger kids coming up to me and showing me a picture, or telling me how excited they are about learning to cook this specific dish. They'll also tell me what kind of the salts that they use and and how they're using them and asked me my favorite. So it's so exciting to see a young kid get excited about salt too, because you would have never expected that that would have been a thing. But it is.

And is that in any retail stores? Or is it all like direct to consumer off the web.

It's mostly direct to consumer off the web, but it is it is actually starting to pop up in more and more stores, whether they're little butcher shops or just small little specialty stores. And we're considering doing a little bit more with that. But it's been exciting for me to get pictures from friends or different, you know, different people on online tagging me and suddenly seeing Osmo in some store that I didn't you know, I didn't even know about yet. So it's been great to see it spread around.

And I know you said you know you don't really think too far ahead. So I guess maybe you don't have a 20 year plan or so. But what short term? What are you working on? I mean, obviously, the book is taking a ton of time and you're going to be creating videos. But do you have any other things that we haven't talked about that you're working on right now?

I really mean it when I, when I say that I take things day by day, a lot of the time, of course, I I try to think forward and think ahead. But in this space, things move. So fast opportunities come up without you expecting them to come up. And things can change in such a short period of time that that I that I'm always sort of moving on the fly. So I don't know what's next, I have different things that float around my head, floating in my mind, do I want to open a restaurant at some point? Do I, you know, do I do another cookbook? Do I just want to keep making videos and stick to that for a while after the book is sort of settled down? After the dust is settled there? I really don't know. But whatever it is, I'm very happy and excited. I just, I never really know until it happens sometimes now.

So then what dictates a yes or no, I'm sure having as many followers as you do that someone's inbox, probably your PR team gets blown up with opportunities. But when something comes across your table to do a collab, endorse a product do this thing. How do you decide what is worth your time and what is not?

I try to keep it authentic. And that's the only way to keep moving forward for me. Because if it's not, then I'm just not going to be excited about it. And I think that's going to be very obvious to anyone that sees it. So if it's something that I truly love, then that's when I usually lean more to it. Yes. I also have a great team around me. And it's it's very helpful to talk to people about just you know, what do you think I like to hear everyone's opinion, and I want to know what people think. Because it's not just me and this anymore. But it can be very difficult to figure out yes or no on certain things. It can be hard.

And there's nothing wrong with trying something and not working out and then cutting it right. Like I feel like sometimes people feel they've started something they don't want to quit. But I'm a believer in Yeah, like, try a bunch of stuff. But I did this thing. It didn't work out. I don't think it's worth my time. Let's keep moving. Right? Yep. What's exciting to you about food right now? Like, is there a place? Is there a style of cuisine dish? Like, what are you excited about?

I just think everything's changing so fast, some in good ways, and some and bad ways in the world. But with food. I feel like there's something new whether it's a new trend, new. The best example I can think of is, I don't know, let's say sunchokes. A couple of years ago, people had no idea what sunchokes even more and then all of a sudden they were in every single restaurant, they were in a puree, they would make them they would make them fry they pickle them. And then suddenly everyone's excited about sunchokes or what are the I'm blanking on the name. What are the peppers that

like shishito peppers? Yeah,

Shishito peppers is another great example, right? Shishito peppers, all of a sudden were on every single menu everywhere. And they made them you know, you had blistered shishito peppers, and you had like miso, Shishito Pepper. So I think just seeing more and more people learn new things about food, and then be excited about this new ingredient is one of my favorite things. I know, it sounds like something simple. But I really liked the idea that, you know, there's something great out there that people don't know about quite yet. And then suddenly, it becomes it becomes known enough that it's on every single menu, and people are doing different and fun things with it. And and everyone and you know, everyone is able to suddenly try it and understand it. That's exciting to me. Because I think it's it's very common that people get stuck in this sort of, you know, you go to the market, and you get the same thing every time and you don't really branch out. But I've had so many friends in the past two, I've shown them something new, they've tasted something new, and then their eyes light up. And they can't believe that they haven't tasted it before. And they some part of them just awakens inside. And I like to see that in people. And, you know, with with that phenomenon that I'm talking about with the Shishito Pepper explosion. That's what that's how it happens. And it makes people happy and excited. So I love to see that.

It makes my job easier. You know, the challenge is, as a personal chef, I propose menus, like I build custom menus for you. So you fill out a questionnaire about what you'd like and don't like. And I think a lot of people tend to, even though they've seen some of these things on menus or whatever, they will tell you that there may be steak and potatoes and how do I convert that person? So maybe it has to be like a special bonus chef's course or something. But I love seeing people when they've never tried something. I do a sunchoke pannacotta right, which I don't know that I've seen anywhere else. I think I built it off Jeremy foxes on vegetables. I think there was something like a sunchoke milk in there or something. I was like, oh cool, like what if I infused the cream base, and then just did a traditional pannacotta add some sugar, some gelatin and people are like totally blown away. So then my mind starts going down these roads like I want some I'm think crumbly. So I think of IKEA and I get like their rye crisp bread, and then use like Christina Tosi style, like crumble up their crisp bread and melt, you know, melted butter and brown sugar and put that on. And that's just for them. It's like, oh, would it be crazy to put a little dill on here and put like a sprig of dill and like, that's just, you know, I'm building one after another, but it goes back to like, seeing something cool. And one person's cookbook, you know, Jeremy Fox, and the thing about like, Christina toesies, crumble technique, and just kind of like, melding these things together, but still making my own recipes. Which is where again, I love giving shout outs to people who, you know, I've borrowed techniques from them. But yes, like people then will be like, Oh, sunchokes, I at least have seen those. I've tried them once. And yeah, I'll get that as a dessert. So

I love hearing that creative process. By the way, it's super exciting to hear somebody who's excited about food, talk about it in that kind of way. It's a really fun thing to look into the mind of somebody who thinks about food in a different way that you do. I do

a daily creative practice. There's a guy, James Altucher. He has a podcast, a bunch of books. I don't know if you've ever heard of him, but he and his wife wrote a book called Become an Idea machine. And basically, that like if you wrote 10 ideas a day, so their book is like a guided one. Like he gives you ideas. And I picked this up like eight years ago. So I have a notebook and every day, it's like, freeform, I'll just, you know, throw something out. Avocados. Okay, right avocados. And I don't know what that's going to be and I just do 10 things. avocado ice cream. What if I, you know, battered and fried avocados? What if I pureed avocados and mixed it in a masa dough and made an avocado tortilla like it could be ridiculous. And I do that every day and some of its garbage. And then sometimes I'll go back and look at something I'm like, wow, that was a good idea. I'm not sure that that's how I would do it. But I'm going to build on that. So I'm creating, you know, 10 new potential recipe ideas or components a day. And that's how a lot of my recipes come about.

I love that. And I just, I wish I could spend time with more and more and more people to just have this kind of conversation and see into the into the way their mind works with food because we all think about it such a different way. And again, you can learn something from everyone.

Yeah, absolutely. Do you have any parting words for our listeners, you've had so much great advice, hear so much. But if you want to leave people with one or two things, what would that be?

To whoever you are listening. This motto is everywhere for me. And it's very simple. And talk about giving credit. It's straight from the movie Ratatouille, which is my favorite movie, but I still think it I still think it's important. I really believe that anyone can cook. And no matter what your skill level is, no matter what you've done in the kitchen or what you think you can do. It's true. And I've seen it so many different times. And so if you're just starting to cook or if you're already a fantastic chef, anyone can cook and go into the kitchen and have fun and just enjoy it.

100% I am so on board with that it's a life skill. You don't have to make it a profession. You don't have to video it just just start cooking. We all eat right? We all eat at least three times a day. I mean, you know, sometimes my kids skip meals, but we all eat three times a day. Yeah. Well, thanks for coming on the show. It's been great talking to you and getting to know you.

Thank you so much. I really enjoyed the chat. Thanks for having me.

As always, we put everything in the show notes, people will be able to get the book a link to your Osmo salt. They'll be able to find you on social I'm sure people if they're listening to this, they probably already found you because my audience compared to your, you know, 30 million or whatever. They already know you but all of the links are in the show notes. And to everyone out there. This has been Chris with the Chefs Without Restaurants podcast. Thanks so much and have a great week. Go to chefs without restaurants.org To find our Facebook group, mailing list and check database. The community is free to join. You'll get gig opportunities, advice on building and growing your business and you'll never miss an episode of our podcast. Have a great week.