Last year was the year of Tasty, Buzzfeed’s food channel. Buzzfeed Motion Pictures took over Facebook feeds the world over with their under-a-minute overhead recipe videos that garnered thousands of likes and perhaps even inspired one or two people to cook.
Tasty launched in the summer of 2015 and today boasts more than 79 million likes of Facebook. The appetite for speedy food-based web videos is showing no signs of being sated.
These videos are the visual equivalent of fast food, snippets of instant gratification served quickly. There’s a time and a place for this type of video experience, such as when you’re travelling on public transport or when you’re procrastinating on a deadline.
But this isn’t the only way to consume food online. If you’re in the market for a more thoughtful watch, something with a bit of substance, there is a rich bounty of food videos out there.
Filmmaker Andrew Gooi, originally from Malaysia and now based in the US captures food stories through his siteFood Talkies. There are portraits of chefs such as James Beard Award nominee Kevin Binkley and of delicacies such as Chinese mooncakes, but perhaps most enjoyable is the Food From Home series, which captures chefs, authors and cooks talking about their heritage and upbringing, with food as the storytelling technique.
Food.Curated is another portrait and profile video site, by filmmaker Liza de Guia. A recent film highlights Chef Bun Lai of Miya's Sushi in New Haven, Connecticut. Lai tells the story of how his mother, a keen gardener who opened the restaurant 20 years ago, influenced Lai's invasive species menu, made up of non-native species threatening the local ecosystem around the restaurant.
The video follows Lai as he forages particular types of invasive seaweed and explains how he makes kimchi from Japanese knotweed, on the top 100 list of the word’s most destructive invasive species.
The Art of Plating is a home to beautifully curated editorial pieces as well as stunning videos, with a side order of an aspirational instagram account. André Chiang, of Michelin-starred Restaurant André in Singapore, is the topic of a recent video profile that takes a dip into Chiang's juice menu at Restaurant André. Chiang is on a mission to change the fine-dining world's mind about what to offer guests who don't drink wine.
“All the effort and care put into decor, creation, service, the dish... but the beverages, we spend so little effort on it,” he says in the video that captures the work he puts into his fermented juice menu to accompany his tasting menus, entitled 3 Months, 1 Juice.
The Perennial Plate is a documentary series by chef and activist Daniel Klein and filmmaker Mirra Fine, with a eye on socially responsible yet adventurous eating.
Fáilte Ireland hosted this award-winning duo as they travelled around Ireland last autumn, to piggy-back on their wide-reaching platforms (such as 48k Facebook likes) and spread the word about Ireland. The videos from their trip to Ireland capture food folks discovered off the beaten track, such as professional surfers turned organic farmers on the Wild Atlantic Way or local heroes such as Chef Katie Sanderson.
The output of Mind of A Chef, the US TV show executive produced by Anthony Bourdain and hosted by chefs including David Chang, April Bloomfield and Gabrielle Hamilton, continues to go deep into food cultures, looking at food through the prisms of history, culture, travel and science. Season Five was released last year and you can watch previous episodes on Netflix.
These content creators come at food from a different angle to Tasty, and they’re developed for a different, perhaps more culinary aware audience. They all share a taste for capturing food stories, moving away from the shiny allure of celebrity, speed or viral potential (e.g. Epic Meal Times fast food lasagna.)
But that's not to say a good personality paired with an irreverent approach to reviewing food can't make for truly entertaining viewing. The latest online food star is Elijah Quashie aka the Chicken Connoisseur, whose YouTube channel The Pengest Munch blew up before Christmas.
The videos, made by Quashie’s friend Elishama Udorok, follow this chicken enthusiast on his quest to rate London’s chicken shops. “It was very very underwhelming still,” is his conclusion of Chicken King in Tottenham. “Man didn’t even have burger sauce. How could I respect you?”
The Peng in The Pengest Munch is slang for "really good looking" so Quashie, who himself looks about 14 (though he hasn't confirmed his actual age yet), dresses in his Sunday best of sharp ties and waistcoats to review these fast-food spots. He is also a vintage trainer enthusiast and his creps get a shout-out in the videos, too.
With more than 3.5 million views on episode six, and a total of 11 episodes so far, Quashie is a gas man who hopefully won’t fall fowl of the fickle nature of sudden internet fame.
