After only five months of making and posting their videos on YouTube, the cooking team behind Epic Meal Time will be featured on a segment on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno this Thursday.
“I still really can’t believe it,” says Harley Morenstein, the 25-year-old host of the weekly Epic Meal Time episodes and the phenomenon’s co-founder. Since their first video was posted on Oct. 17 of last year, their shorts – which feature the seven-member Montreal-based Epic Meal Time crew buying food, cooking up five-digit-plus caloric dishes, and then devouring them – have garnered more than 40-million hits. The tone is goofy and irreverent, with all of the unapologetic silliness of a childhood dare (bet you can't eat that!). Imagine the Jackass crew in chef’s attire.
Morenstein, a native of Montreal’s West Island, says he has been making “crazy videos” about various topics and posting them for years on YouTube. But last year, he and his friend Sterling Toth, 27, were sitting around having a few drinks when they came up with the idea for making outrageously huge, over-the-top dishes, and capturing their execution for YouTube.
“A number of sites began linking to us, and things really took off quickly,” notes Morenstein. “I think people have a certain sense of suspense around the show. People are like, ‘What are these goofy Canadians going to cook up next?’ We really had no cooking experience before doing this show. We’ve just jumped in with it.” They have posted a new video every Tuesday since their premiere.
Epic Meal Time has already drawn a following in Canada – Justin Bieber is reportedly a fan – and Morenstein and Toth say they are asked for autographs when they visit the food court at their local shopping mall. The two have also been interviewed on ABC News Nightline.
“It’s been a roller coaster,” says Toth, a former graphic designer. (Both have left their jobs to tend to Epic Meal Time full time.) “But in a way, we’re not entirely surprised. We knew we had a good idea.”
In 2009, Morenstein and Toth won an online video competition held by John Tesh, which came with $5,000. “We immediately took that money and went out and bought better camera equipment so we could make our videos look better.”
Epic Meal Time’s menu is certainly colourful, with recipes that include “Meatball Deathstar,” “Breakfast of Booze,” “The Worst Pizza Ever,” “Massive Meatlog,” and “Slaughterhouse Christmas Special.” Epic Meal Time has some detractors, who connect the glorification of such irresponsible eating with the recent death of the spokesman for the Heart Attack Grill, an Arizona restaurant that specializes in high-fat dishes. But Morenstein says he and his team aren’t necessarily urging people to try this at home. “We have vegan fans too, people who tune in simply to see what we’re going to come up with.”
There has even been a non-meat response, Epic Vegan Time, posted on YouTube by a vegetarian cook, which has received numerous hits after being linked on PETA’s official site.
Right now, Morenstein and Toth say they are focused on preparing for their 10-minute segment on Leno’s Thursday show, which will feature them creating one of their notorious dishes. But the pair are also in talks with several networks about the possibilities for an Epic Meal Time cooking show.
“We're thrilled about the idea of a show,” says Morenstein. “But we want to make sure we don't lose creative control.”
Special to The Globe and Mail
