Chef John from FoodWishes.com

I just wanted to let everyone know about the greatest YouTuber of all time. His name is Chef John and he runs a video blog called Food Wishes where every week he films himself prepare a new dish requested by his viewers. Just his hands are visible, no face, which is a shame because he looks bizarre and has a big bushy Super Mario mustache. The man has been doing this since around 2007, so he’s been at the top of the YouTube food game longer than practically anyone. I love his recipes, which range from sensible to brilliant to truly bonkers. The samosadilla: a cross between a quesadilla and a samosa. Genius!! Mini meatloaf ghosts: a bunch of little meatloaves shaped like ghosts draped in a white sheet of  provolone cheese. He used a knife to poke out little :o faces in them. bonkers!! the man is off his rocker!! Recently he made a lasagna with polenta instead of pasta. I think that’s pretty neat. He also once made a large meatloaf shaped like a face. He has HUNDREDS OF RECIPES and they’re all great. I love chef John. I’ve been trying to watch more Chef John videos even as I’ve been trying to curb my YouTube intake. I think “I’m finally quitting YouTube” is the phrase I’ve said the most and it must be pretty annoying to hear at this point. I’ve been successful a few times, partially or fully abstaining from any videos for months at a time, but then there’s always a relapse, followed by a much longer period of daily consumption of YouTube videos for hours at a time. I’d rather not think about how much of my life I’ve spent watching YouTube. It’s too depressing. Instead I think about those periods of abstinence, when I really did feel like my days were longer and more satisfying. I had more focus and less desire for distraction. I did creative stuff and was generally less of a sad sack. YouTube is a weird kind of hell for me sometimes because it makes me upset to spend any time on, yet because the YouTube algorithm is so enmeshed with my gullible monkey brain, I’m always convinced that the thing that will actually give me relief or make the time more worthwhile is *more* YouTube. Like if I were just to find the perfect video that would satisfy me to the point of not needing to watch another. Then the cycle deepens and I feel worse. …unless that video is a Chef John video The most distinctive thing about Chef John is his way of speaking: he starts every video the same: “helLOO this is CHEF John from FOOODwishes dot comm wwIiithh… <recipe title>!!!!!!! that’s right!”. Sometimes my old roommate would get annoyed and tell me to stop watching his videos because his vocal inflections were too annoyingly repetitive. He’s always like “dadadadaDADA⬆️, daDAdadadaDUDU⬇️“ if that makes any sense. It makes sense if you watch. I think it’s good. Chef John has a vibe somewhere between t.v. newscaster and fun aunt who used to smoke weed. He also always says some variant on “you are the boss of your sauce” that sometimes makes sense but by the fact that he has to say it hundreds of times, usually doesn’t make sense. It’s like, “you are the Sylvester Stallone of your Provolone” or “you are the Louis Vuitton of your blue cheese croutons” or “you are the Ringo Starr of your tuna tartare” or “you are the Patrick Swayze of your bologne-ze” or “you are El Capitan of your scallop gratin”. Those are real and I like them. I think I’ll probably never entirely stop watching YouTube, or at least I can’t picture that for myself right now, but as long as I watch some Chef John I won’t falafel.