15 years I have been in and out of kitchens. An on and off affair. Love and hate. Sometimes a freelance gun for hire, other times a passionate leader pushing kitchens towards awards and acknowledgements. The silver thread weaving my experiences together would always be giving a big fat fuck for good service and the people alongside the experience. Making sure the customer is seen, heard and looked after.
That's the important bit to me on a personal level.
I left the industry at 27 to bang out some corporate nonsense for a break following a spectacular burnout after my last head chef stint.
After realising my dream corporate job as a music director for an up and coming tech/production company could actually be a subliminal nightmare, I bailed out of the proverbial rat race after only 4 and a half years and set up a small deli in a park in Amsterdam off the back of my friends nightclub.
A story for another time perhaps but in short co-parenting a dishwasher with a team that works opposite hours and has different standards of getting stuff done has its own set of unique challenges.
For the better part the customers make my day. I have done 6 days a week solidly since launching in June 2026. I have taken no sick days and have become my own martyr; fuck my life right. Although it is challenging in itself and a bit of a moving goalpost situationship everyday, it is enjoyable compared to the corporate facing greenwashing I was roped into before.
Being that I am now a full time chef again, the cleaner, a terrible accountant, proficient-ish plumber (wet lego right?), an awful awful electrician and most annoyingly the chief marketing officer. There is something I wanted to talk about specifically; why are we humouring food influencers?
Coming from a background of finding and making lovely food and always searching for records (in another life I make music and collect records still). Curation has always been a prominent focus in my life.
Every restaurant I have worked with before ditching the space never really focused on instagram, the digital footprint and content, instead generally relying on the tyre people or the friendly folk over at the yellow breakdown service. Reliable guides with a nose for the good stuff. This was also one of my prime avenues for finding places.
The Bib Gourmond comes to mind here, which directed me to a lot of my favorite meals in the past. I guess this was the time before the algorithm became the hungry behemoth consuming everything and all in its path. Am I old now?
Now setting up something in the now future is proving to be a bit of a shitshow in itself. I could never really make a music career work in my younger days due to the pressures of creating social content - now more than ever too - this was the job of the PR people was it not? For some bizarre reason I'm currently staring down the barrel of soulless content or surefire bankruptcy.
The humble little park dwelling deli functions as it should in all fairness. I can't complain. Year 1 survived. No debt and with any luck - year 2 will do something hopefully maybe that allows me some freedoms again - with a little less pressure. This wasn't an endeavour set up to make millions.
It was set up to sustain a poor man with poor life choices with little other options aside from the obvious skillset in the midst of a looming recession and an incredibly competitive ad and production industry.
Although the capacity could definitely go higher and the ceiling is far from being hit on that site, considering the marketing spend for the whole project is a resounding fat zero we seem to have amassed 4k followers over the course of a year of operations. Through organic sales and face to face pitching/semi-convincing conversations with a lovely selection of locals.
Perhaps people feel rude after talking to me for too long and feel compelled to follow along for the ride or there is some sort of conspiracy I have not yet figured out. Either way - we are being seen in some capacity doing something right or perhaps incredibly wrong...
This leads to exposure I guess. Our digital footprint is limited. We have less than 20 posts online. Having had no ad spend until yesterday as we need a little help from the fine tech bros at Meta launching our pizza offering, as summer has been incredibly slow on the pickup due to bastard climate change.
For the limited time I open the app to post our daily something or other to keep people in the know and to show that we have not quite yet declared insolvency, I am bombarded with content, content and more content, ironically making me feel a lot less than content however feeling like maybe I should be making content. There's people to compare myself to. People to compare the deli to.
Better kitchens, better equipment. Functioning businesses. People making millions who will show you how too. A real comparison thief of joy situation. Fuck me - an ever constant barrage of comparative horseshit that makes me feel like a big fat failure. So you try and dial out right?
Something noticeable over the past few months is the amount of people reaching out into the nether regions of my DMs asking to collab. What the fuck is a collab I ask? Do you ask that too? A collaboration from my understanding is a mutual effort between two parties to build something together. I go onto these individuals profiles and see a myriad of food related content.
Often stating that they just had the best meal of their life once again. Riddle me this, how on God's green earth are you having the best meal of your life every night and day in places that in all fairness look like they serve dog shit sandwiches. It's a funny old issue.
My girlfriend and I sat with two close friends for a meal last night who own a restaurant themselves and they run an extremely strict no influencer policy which is working really well for them. Risky you say? Just a flat out ban. I think this is also our official approach going forwards now too. We have avoided bringing people through - only those who chose to come of their own accord.
The idea of cameras in the joint makes me feel a bit uncomfortable to be honest. I actually recoiled once when someone filmed me making their food and asked them to just fucking not. Even the CCTV has that effect on me and that's something necessary to keep the place safe and compliant.
The idea of the content creator personally to me is an extremely blurred line between a critic, journalist, foodie and more often than not a self righteous narcissist with a need for the spotlight. In reality, the vast majority seem like opportunistic parasites attempting to enrich themselves from others' graft. Not any graft either.
The graft in question intersects exploitation, passion, risk, ability, debt and the rest. Perpetual stress to share a dream. People that honestly live for their craft and will risk it all to make it work - sometimes for ego but most of the time simply for others…
Just a quick reality check - all industries are pretty down right now but hospitality is royally fucked. Fifty shades of fucked to be precise. Margins are literally razor thin, costs are being squeezed like the last of the toothpaste in a reluctant household and if you're not a clever little cunt with your cooking and an absolute freak for spreadsheets you may as well sack it off now.
So the fact there are these digital creatures lurking and preying on people who are desperate to make their dream work is actually fucked when there is no real upside. Aside from some visibility on a channel where people may or may not give a fuck. I'm not a gambling man, but that sounds a lot like investing in Woolworth's at today's market open to me. A far cry from NVIDIA or AMD calls.
I am again digressing, back to the collab, the vast majority of the chancers that reach out, asking to work have never even tried my delights, not even sampled let alone set foot in the deli. I have humoured a few and sat down with a handful and have noticed they don't even want to try the products I make. This is suss as fuck no?
Even in the corporate hellscape I would grease up the potential clients, shmoozing and seasoning the deal till we made something work. Maybe they're not that hungry. Maybe content creators feed solely on content. Ideas sucked out like marrow only leaving clean hollow bones, sustaining themselves with bloating follower counts and likes. Delicious.
Now get this. Most of these people want me to pay them?! You ask for free service, goods and request unfettered access to our little worlds. Worlds we built for us and our people. They literally want me to pay them to pretend to like my food. Michelin was sometimes full of shit and certain reviewers cut close but this is something else. This feels incredibly deceptive and downright dishonest.
If I was a wash business for a drug cartel - this would certainly be my approach, however, sadly, I do try and make nice things for nice people so I need them to try and decide for themselves. At the end of the day you can't yuck another man's yum. And who am I to yuck theirs. But I'm not paying people to eat my food.
The pipeline for becoming a food influencer really does perplex me. I have often sat and thought about this. I spent years living in fear of other chefs coming to my restaurants. Inspectors turning up and declaring me shit - not even worth a stop for a piss in the toilet.
Jay Rayner lived rent free in my head for years as a menacing tenant banging on the walls next door keeping me up and ready. The people I feared and who decided whether I was doing a good enough job had earned their stripes so to say. Either in gruelling kitchens themselves or through the mediocre greasy pole of journalism.
Working their way to where they wanted to be with refined tastes and said abilities to sniff out diamonds in the rough. Even then I used to think, but how can they yuck my yum? How's that fair? How are they allowed to decide the success or whether I change tact or try harder or even try too much? You get the picture - these environments bred insecurity and scrutiny on the self.
Ultimately it all boils down to personal taste. I don't like aubergine. But I love babaganoush. I also don't like courgette - at all really, or cucumber for that matter - they taste like shit melons. A good pickle is excellent though. It seems there's a certain breed of creators who love everything ever.
Toxic positivity maybe, to be fair it may be a sweet combination of money for nothing so to speak and anonymous validation from strangers. It's really nice to be able to make your craft your living but if it's at the expense of others' arguably harder graft there is certainly an imbalance at play no?
So a creator wants to make content. Thus starts making content about food. The good, bad and the ugly. Sniping templates that seem to work for other content creators. Then banging about on the same crusades as each other eating the same slop being paid - inflating a market that doesn't exist in any real sense. A ponzu scheme, am I right?
Now it's not all hate and bitterness from my camp. I sound like a rude aging asshole. But in reality I really truly believe in the power of discovery. How many times have you been on holiday and just followed your nose like some sort of pie-horny disney gnome?
Sometimes you hit gold, sometimes you hit dogshit. It's all part of the game. But when you do find the gold, you know. Notably for me and my gf in Oxacao - 'Esme's'. We ate there 3 times over the course of two weeks and diverted travel on the way back to Mexico City to hit it up not once but twice more.
There is a notable food influencer who came to my joint of their own accord. They refused free food even after I realised who it was. They have since come back regularly without a camera and continue to bring their friends. This reminds me of the critics of the olden days. He was ultimately a customer who essentially just wanted to help as he enjoyed it so much. Fuck me, thats just really nice right?
There are some really great creators out there who spearhead quality and this is in no way shade to them. I respect you but it comes back to earning the place of being able to call it as it is. This person also calls out shit places so kudos for being real in an ever performative world brother you are appreciated to the utmost degree.
On the other side of the coin we're now seeing a rise in the anti-influencers who are going to places to call them out for serving terrible food. While I relish in this like some sort of culinary schadenfreude I can't help but freak out that they will in turn come and shit on my parade too undermining everything I have put in to harvest the engagement.
In the age of the algorithm - discovery is the gold. Whether it's digging records or checking out a new spot that just opened. The beauty is in the joy of finding something special or not special. Finding something you enjoy or don't. The point is, the journey is often as important as the destination. And if it is shit - at least you took the time and went with people you love, or at least told them.
Maybe in turn they go check it out, maybe they love it. It's all really subjective. Beauty in the eye of the beholder et al.
Allow these self noshing cut copy paste algorithmic characters casting the same wide net of mediocrity. Follow your senses, talk to your mates, go discover.
Because when the socials self implode these parasites are left with nothing. While we have bricks and mortar, communities and something we actually built together.