Everything You Need To Know About YouTube Chef Andrew Rea
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With over 10 million subscribers, Babish Culinary Universe is one of the most popular cooking channels on YouTube. Although it now incorporates the work of many professionals, chefs and otherwise, this particular channel began with one man: Andrew Rea.
Rea launched his empire with "Binging with Babish," a self-produced show – named after the "West Wing" character Oliver Babish – in which Rea recreates famous dishes from film and TV. In the first official episode, Rea reproduced two burgers from the hit TV series "Parks and Recreation." He has since gone on to make the Krabby Supreme from "Spongebob Squarepants," the timpano from Stanley Tucci's "Big Night," and the confit byaldi featured in "Ratatouille," amongst many others.
Today, Rea's channel posts a range of videos from multiple series, including several hosted by food media's biggest stars. This is a startling level of success for an ex-film school graduate with no official culinary training. But Rea has made a habit of beating the odds.
Rea's love of cooking came from his mother
Andrew Rea loved both food and cooking from an early age. He attributes this early passion to his mother. Although Rea liked cooking, in an interview with Slate, he hinted that one of the main reasons he did it was to spend time with his mother: "When [my mom] was making cookies, I wanted in. When she served cookies, I wanted her to say, 'Me and Andy made these.'"
Rea's mother died when he was 11 years old. His hobby of cooking then became a means of remembering her. His love of cooking huge stews and snacking on pieces of uncooked spaghetti are just two ways cooking continues to connect him with her decades later.
Although Rea decided not to attend culinary school, his passion for cooking still lasted into early adulthood. In his twenties, he began cooking more advanced food for his friends. His specialty hangover breakfast consisted of sous vide quail eggs with asparagus and truffle oil crostini – not your average post-party meal. Of course, at this point, Rea was unaware that the skills learned from his mother and honed in his twenties would play such an enormous part in his career.
A career in film gave him the skills to make his own show
Andrew Rea decided to attend film school. In 2009, he graduated from Hofstra University with a degree in Film Studies. For years, Rea worked across the film industry, including roles in special effects. By age 28, however, Rea was struggling. He was working as a freelance documentary filmmaker and editor but was feeling creatively unfulfilled. It was at this point that Rea bought some camera equipment and began producing the early episodes of "Binging with Babish."
In the beginning, one thing that set "Binging with Babish" apart was the show's high production quality, including Rea's smooth editing and baritone voice-over. These production skills, along with the quality with which they are executed, arose from Rea's career in film.
Even in recent years, as Rea has hired full-time staff, he still puts his film skills to use. He explained as much in a Reddit post: "I shoot and edit Binging probably 90% of the time. I used to worry that it's because I'm a control freak, but it's actually because it's the quickest and most efficient way to make the show. The only camera angle is the straight-on torso-level camera, which I control from an external recorder/monitor ... I record the voice-over as I watch down the initial assembly edit, which I inevitably have to make changes to on-the-fly."
He has almost no professional cooking experience
YouTube star Andrew Rea's lack of formal culinary education has been well documented. Yet, fewer people are aware that he briefly held a couple of jobs in professional kitchens. Rea detailed these in an interview with Wired: "My work in restaurants has been limited to a dessert platter at a restaurant in Brooklyn called The Chocolate Room and as a server at a place in Rochester ... And a crepe maker at a place called Simply Crepes, in Rochester." Rea is quick to dismiss these experiences and never labels himself a chef. His reasoning for this choice is simple: he hasn't earned it.
This transparency has won him the respect and admiration of many viewers. What's more, the fact Rea has limited cooking experience makes his shows seem more approachable. After all, if this self-taught home cook can do it, why can't anyone?
He started creating food content in an effort to rise to the top of Reddit
YouTube is the site of Andrew Rea's success, but Reddit was where he cut his food media teeth. In the days before "Binging with Babish," Rea's obsession with the subreddit r/Food inspired him to create advanced dishes and to pitch them in novel ways. These two skills would directly contribute to the early days of "Binging with Babish."
As Rea explained to Slate, some of this early work was pretty good: "I had become addicted to trying to get to the top of the food Subreddit by posting pretty pictures of dinner with interesting stories behind them. They were all true stories; I never made anything up. I would come up with provocative titles, like—I remember one that I posted a long time ago, my now ex-wife's boss was coming over for dinner, and I said I really wanted to blow his pants off. That obviously got people talking, but also, I made a steak with a blueberry mustard sauce and some really pretty-looking stuff. It was a mixture of an evocative title and some actually decent food porn."
Interestingly, the first episode of "Binging with Babish" was designed as a way to make an impact on the Reddit community. It didn't take long for Rea to move over to YouTube. Despite this, Rea still appears to post regularly on Reddit under the username OliverBabish, maintaining a level of direct engagement with fans.
His first YouTube show, Binging with Babish, was a near-instant hit
The early episodes of "Binging with Babish" found a receptive if small audience. According to Eater, the first episode initially had around 10,000 views. The same video now has around nine million views. Viewership really took off when Andrew Rea decided to recreate The Moistmaker, a sandwich that is drooled over by David Schwimmer's character in the hit sitcom "Friends." The single sandwich recipe consisting of Thanksgiving leftovers required Rea to make several recipes from scratch.
The Moistmaker episode was the first big breakthrough of Rea's career, as he recalled to The Washington Post: "The 'Moistmaker' was the first show to be widely circulated. That's when it occurred to me that what I was doing wasn't just for a niche audience, but something that could potentially reach a lot of people." The video wracked up millions of views and quickly drew the attention of many media outlets. Rea capitalized on the spotlight by increasing his output and hasn't looked back since.
His lack of experience is what makes Binging with Babish approachable
Andrew Rea is not mistake-proof. In fact, the majority of his "Binging with Babish" videos are littered with mistakes and false starts. While many YouTube personalities strive for perfection — and may have edited the mistakes out — Rea embraces them, believing that they make the show more approachable and teach home cooks that mistakes are not the end of the world.
Rea highlighted this thought process to Nice News: "I have no formal training, so anything I know how to do, I know how to do it because I screwed up multiple times until I figured out how to do it right. And I want to make home cooks less afraid of making mistakes in the kitchen and more open to seeing them as learning and growing experiences."
The YouTuber has even used the various mistakes made throughout his "Binging with Babish" series to create another program, called "Botched by Babish." In this series, Rea revisits old episodes. With the help of experts, he highlights mistakes made in these episodes and attempts to rectify them.
Rea's shows combine information and entertainment
Andrew Rea launched "Binging with Babish" with the intention of expressing himself. What he didn't realize was that his show would provide the perfect balance of intersection of entertainment and information.
Rea attributes his success to this combination, as he explained to The Splendid Table: "From what people are telling me and what I see in the comments, there's a drought of information-rich, entertaining, dynamic content online. Most of the stuff on the internet is vloggers, people who are trying to be personalities, first and foremost. I set out to make a show that was truly about the food. Any role that I play in it, beyond my arms, is going to be incidental. This is why I wear a black apron and generally frame my face out of the shot; I am literally the backdrop for the food."
It's true that some of Rea's shows focus on his on-screen personality, more than the food. This is particularly the case with "Being with Babish," a show where Rea often makes surprise visits to his fans. Yet, the vast majority of shows on the Babish Culinary Universe continue to champion the original creed of combining information and entertainment. Perhaps the best examples of this are "Pruébalo," a show that explores the cuisine of Mexico and is hosted by celebrity chef Rick Martinez, and "Basics with Babish," in which Rea teaches viewers the fundamentals of cooking in a fun and accessible way.
He launched a cookware line
Like many celebrity chefs before him, Andrew Rea has launched his own line of branded cookware. Initially, this took the form of Babish cookware items listed for sale on Amazon. These products were met with mixed reviews. Some customers reported a lack of durability, while others were impressed with the overall quality.
This initial launch has been dwarfed by Rea's cookware release with Walmart. He described the benefits of working with Walmart to Forbes: "Being able to work with Walmart is a huge dream for most any manufacturer. We're introducing nonstick cookware exclusively to Walmart, which is at a much more accessible price point for anybody who's getting their first set of cookware or replacing their old set. It's a great place to start."
The items of cookware available range from stainless steel prep bowls to cast iron skillets. A particularly affordable option is the 10-piece nonstick cookware set which includes two frying pans, two saucepans, one sauté pan, and a Dutch oven all for $149.00. At the time of writing, reviews for this recent cookware drop appear to be mostly positive.
Rea suffers from depression
It's easy to assume that successful people are happy, especially when you only see snippets of their life online. For Andrew Rea, however, success did not translate into happiness. Instead, years of working 70 or more hours per week on his YouTube channel led to poor mental health. From late 2021 to early 2022, even after his channel had taken off, Rea experienced more noticeable periods of burnout and depression. But this wasn't the first time he dealt with these feelings. In fact, Rea was dealing with depression when he launched "Binging with Babish" in 2016.
Rea has always been an advocate for seeking help when it comes to mental health. In fact, he credits the support he received as a key factor in launching "Binging with Babish." He revealed in an interview on Medium that: "The show is intrinsically tied to my being chemically depressed and having general anxiety disorder. I have anxiety and panic attacks and I permanently suffer from depression. My decision to start helping myself and seeking help and getting on medication was the first step in creating the show."
Over the years, Rea has repeatedly used his platform to reduce the stigma surrounding mental health illnesses. He even selected his antidepressants as one of the 10 things he could not live without in a GQ YouTube video.
He has authored several cookbooks
It's almost a foregone conclusion that a food media star of Andrew Rea's caliber would have a cookbook or two published. His debut, "Eat What You Watch: A Cookbook for Movie Lovers," came out in 2017. It contained over 40 of Rea's most beloved early recipes, such as Butterbeer from the Harry Potter series.
Reviews of the book were positive, even if the recipes are a bit complex. This was highlighted by one reviewer who stated on Amazon: "I came into this cookbook knowing exactly what I was asking for. A list of sometimes overly fancy recipes based on movies. And it delivered exactly what I wanted ... Andrew Rea doesn't cheap out on teaching more specialized techniques like making puff pastry or how to properly make syrups."
Rea's second book, "Binging with Babish," was released in 2019. His third, "Basics with Babish" is set to release in October 2023. The latter takes a different approach. Instead of overly complex recipes, this book focuses on simpler recipes and techniques that all home cooks should master.
The Babish Culinary Universe is slowly incorporating other chefs
For years, Andrew Rea was the only person to routinely appear on the videos uploaded to his YouTube channel. This changed in 2020 after multiple Bon Appétit staff members left the company amid allegations of unequal pay and a toxic working environment. Sohla El-Waylly, one of the staff members who left Bon Appétit, subsequently teamed up with Rea. Together they launched a program on his YouTube channel called "Stump Sohla." This was to be the first of several guest-presented shows created and published by the Babish Culinary Universe.
Today, several chefs and food media stars have their own show on the Babish Culinary Universe. These include "Anime with Alvin," hosted by Alvin Zhou, and "Street Food," hosted by Senpai Kai. For Rea, introducing a new range of voices has eased his workload. More importantly, each new host gives the Babish Culinary Universe a whole world of expertise and knowledge that results in more informative and engaging food programs for the public to enjoy.
He is launching a bed and breakfast called Bed & Babish
In 2023, Rea looks set to realize his goal of opening his first-ever bed and breakfast. The so-called Bed & Babish is under construction in upstate New York. Rea described it to Forbes as follows: "It's going to be a gorgeous sort of Frank Lloyd Wright-esque slab of glass that's overlooking the Delaware River with eagles nesting and leaves changing. It's going to be a really gorgeous place to get away from the city."
According to the business's Instagram, construction is underway. Even though the structure is not yet finished, bookings are expected to open later in 2023. Announcements on pricing have yet to be made. But with such a huge fan base, it is not going to be difficult for Rea to fill the property. We expect that no matter the price, people will be eager to book a stay here.
Rea has a great relationship with actor Jon Favreau
One of the most impactful episodes of "Binging with Babish" is the recreation of a pasta called aglio e olio from the film "Chef." Andrew Rea told The Splendid Table that this episode has inspired thousands of people to start cooking, something that he takes great pride in.
Jon Favreau wrote, produced, directed, and starred in "Chef." This made it all the more exciting when Favreau invited Rea to feature on his Netflix program "The Chef Show." Rea described the experience to Uproxx: "It was one of the greatest experiences of my life. It was the greatest day of my life. It was a real experience interacting with true celebrities. As such, I was pretty nervous. I'm sure that came across. But, yes, to answer your question, it was a wildly cathartic experience to actually meet Jon Favreau when he was the driving inspiration behind so many episodes of the show and was one of the main reasons why the show existed."
Over the years, Favreau and Rea have struck up a friendship. Favreau even wrote the foreword to Rea's new cookbook, "Basics with Babish." Apparently, it is such a moving piece of writing that Rea was brought to tears. Hopefully, we will see more collaborations between these two giants of media.
There are rumors of a Babish brewpub opening
Aside from the bed and breakfast, there is one other brick-and-mortar project that grabs Andrew Rea's attention: the opening of a brewpub. The dream for this project is simple, as Rea highlighted to the Miami New Times: "I want people to come in and be able to have a beer and a snack from local purveyors and dishes from our most popular videos. Come drink a special-edition Babish beer, eat a Krabby Patty, and watch me make a show."
Unfortunately, executing this project has proved difficult. In 2019, it looked like this pub would open in Brooklyn. In fact, Rea almost signed a lease prior to the pandemic but has not announced anything since. It might be that Rea has been too busy planning the opening of his new bed and breakfast to give the brewpub plan the attention it needs. If this is the case, no one can blame him, we just hope the brewpub materializes sooner rather than later.