The Food Video Genre We Can’t Get Sick Of
After more than a decade, the food dude hangout vid is going strong.
If your YouTube algorithm knows that you vaguely care about restaurants, you’ve probably seen some version of this video: A couple of dudes go out to eat in an outer borough of New York City. Maybe they hit a few spots in one afternoon. There’s no interview, no exposition about the restaurant’s history, and no rankings or reviews — just vibes, non sequiturs, and lamb haneeth.
If hands-and-pans were the 2010s’ preferred short-form food video genre, this…mans-and-lambs style might be the genre of the 2020s for people who miss Anthony Bourdain. The medium lets us wander vicariously through a neighborhood’s worth of restaurants even if we’re stuck at home because of a pandemic, a heat wave, or the tedious responsibilities of adult life.
It’s more or less the model for Kareem Rahma’s recently relaunched Keep the Meter Running, a show (briefly ripped off by the Times in 2024) in which Rahma asks cab drivers to take him to their favorite spots in New York. The premise allows him to cold-plunge and eat pickled herring with a bunch of grey-haired Russian guys in Gravesend, and to salsa dance and eat Cuban ceviche on Long Island.
Before Rahma, the hangout video was (and still is) a signature of Vice personalities like Action Bronson. There were series like Munchies’ Chef’s Night Out, where you got to watch your favorite chef careen through the city with a gaggle of industry friends, getting increasingly drunker and more full. In an era when spontaneity is going extinct, this understated video template lets us feel like serendipitous encounters are still possible. It’s a perfect genre for viewers who are too embarrassed to identify as “foodies,” but who do ultimately want to feel like they’re eating out with their favorite internet comedian.
“It’s like that meme about feeling like you’re part of a friend group from listening in on a podcast,” says Rafi Kam, an early pioneer of the food dude hangout video. From 2014 to 2016, Kam co-hosted the Food Warriors series with Dallas Penn, a designer, podcast host, and internet personality who passed away in 2024. In each episode, filmed on lunch breaks from their day jobs, the pair would get off the train at a new stop on the A train, poll locals on their favorite places to eat, and then follow those off-the-cuff recommendations to chicharrons, club sandwiches, and curried goat.
The A train premise was easy for viewers to follow (both conceptually and geographically), and the interviews with locals brought out some occasional cultural insights about the neighborhood (one MTA employee, answering the call from one of the “help” buttons in the station, recommends McDonald’s), but the point of the series was really watching two friends eat lunch and shoot the shit. “These weren’t videos about the democratic process,” says Kam. “The hang was the thing.”
Kam cites Bourdain as an early influence for the series, along with Cookie Hagendorf’s Slice Harvester blog, about trying to eat at every pizza place in New York. Now, he sees the torch being carried by roaming social media personalities like Nicholas Nuvan (a personal favorite of mine as well), Rob Martinez, and Jaeki Cho.
While every big food publication scrambles to find the next big video franchise, spending production budgets on shiny documentaries and Hot Ones-style celebrity interviews, the hangout video tends to under-promise and over-deliver. “I think the appeal of the form is not just something automatic about the genre, but that the right person is inviting the audience along for the hang,” says Kam. “There’s also the vicarious fulfillment in watching people eat — how does the food look, are the people enjoying it, how much do you at home also want to try some of that.”
What We’re Consuming:
- John Early’s newest film is about a food personality at a “a Bon Appétit-esque test kitchen called ‘Gourmaybe.’”
- Is anyone surprised that Noma is coming back from the dead with a slightly different leadership team?
- Wonder’s CEO Marc Lore wants to turn the company into a platform for AI-generated restaurant concepts.
- Gourmet is currently being sued by a disgruntled competitor. Subscribe to Gourmet!
- Horse-themed restaurants are so hot right now.
