Hey, what's up guys?

My name is Andrew Rea.

I make a YouTube channel called Binging With Babish

and today I'm doing the WIRED

Autocomplete Interview [words click]

[upbeat instrumental music]

Hey, what's going on everybody?

From First We Feast, I'm Sean Evans

and this is Hot Ones.

It's the show with hot questions and ever hotter wings.

Sorry.

First one.

Where does Andrew Rea

live? [paper clicks]

I live here in sunny New York City.

I live in SoHo right now and I'm currently in the terrifying

netherworld where I just had an offer accepted on a home

that I bought in Brooklyn but it's still on the market

so I'm just sitting freaking out.

The whole time during this interview know that I'm just

constantly freaking out in the back of my mind

about this house.

Anywho, I live in SoHo

and hopefully I'm about to live in Brooklyn.

Where does Andrew Rea

come from? [paper cracks]

I come from Rochester, New York.

Oh, you're from Rochester. [muffled speaking]

All right, what's your name, sir?

[Cameraman] Cory.

I come from cameraman Cory's hometown.

It's the birthplace of such fallen giants

as Kodak and Xerox. [chuckles]

I have a Kodak tattoo, actually.

This is my hometown pride tattoo.

A lot of people think that this is apparently

a symbol from Dragon Ball Z.

I have not seen Dragon Ball Z so people will be like,

Oh, sweet 'Dragon Ball Z' tattoo.

I'll be like, Thanks.

This is actually the original Kodak logo from 1911.

EKC, Eastman Kodak Company.

I saw that, I thought it was so cool, first of all,

that a logo like this existed in 1911.

It was wild.

I wanted something that was a little bit of

like a Rochester hometown pride.

I also wanted a reminder to never get caught in my ways

and always be looking forward.

Unlike Kodak.

Where is Andrew Rea's recipe? [paper cracks]

I don't know. [laughs]

What does that mean?

Where's Andrew Rea's recipe?

You can find my recipes on any of my websites

bingingwithbabish.com, basicswithbabish.com.

That's probably what you're asking.

But is it a recipe for me?

Where is my recipe for who I am?

I can't answer that for you, bro.

Where is Andrew Rea with hair?

What's the [beep]? [laughs]

Where's Andrew Rea with hair?

Like in an alternate universe or something?

He's dead, I killed him 'cause he was insecure

'cause he was losing his hair. [laughs]

So next. [sign clacks]

How old is Andrew Rea? [paper clicks]

I'm 32 years of age as of September 2nd of 2019.

I was born in September 2nd of 1987

at approximately 5:08 p.m.

I don't know if that's true.

September 2nd, 1987.

How tall is Andrew Rea?

I'm five foot nine on a good day. [chuckles]

It's the truth.

I went to the doctor recently and she said,

Okay, you're five foot seven.

And I was like, Do it again.

And I stood up real straight and I managed to squeak out

a five 8.5 without shoes on so I wear these boots

they give me a solid half an inch [chuckles]

so I'm a respectable height.

But you're only as tall as you act.

Remember that, folks.

How does Andrew Rea cook? [paper cracks]

With pot and pans.

With a knife, sometimes.

Experimentally.

I'm very okay with making mistakes

and I make a point of showing my mistakes on the show

'cause I want people to not be discouraged

when they make mistakes in the kitchen.

To view them as the learning experiences they are,

both in the kitchen and in life.

This is way deeper question

than this person was anticipating.

How does Andrew Rea know? [laughs]

The answer to that is I don't.

I really don't know what the [beep] you meant by that.

[paper cracks]

How does Andrew Rea live? [laughs]

Are they always like this?

I've watched a few episodes, I don't remember them

being this existential.

How does Andrew Rea live?

One day at a time, mother [beep].

One day at a time, figuring it out,

just like everybody else.

Everybody's just trying to figure it out, okay.

Nobody knows what they're doing.

Everybody's trying to figure it out just like you.

That's the best advice that I ever got

and that's not what that was intended for.

I don't know that that was but I hoped that we gleaned

some useful information [sign clacks]

out of it.

Can Andrew Rea?

This should be good.

Can Andrew Rea age? [chuckles]

Yes, as we speak.

I have gotten about five years older looking

since we've been sitting here.

Can Andrew Rea read? [laughs]

Yeah.

Yep, that's how I read that.

Can Andrew Rea fly? [laughs]

I should have taken like a big bong rip

before I did this so I could--

I didn't realize that these were gonna be so, so out there,

these questions.

Can Andrew Rea fly?

No, I can't fly.

[paper cracks]

Did somebody actually ask that?

Was that an actual search term?

[Interviewer] These were actual

search terms. Can Andrew Rea fly?

What?

Was it a typo?

All right, can Andre Rea podcast?

Yes, I can.

I have a podcast called Bedtime with Babish

[chuckles] where I read-- [chuckles]

No good way to describe this.

I always say, Where I read adult bedtime stories.

And that always sounds pornographic.

And what it really is is Walt Whitman. [chuckles]

Things that grown ups might want to listen to

when they're falling asleep.

What's next? [sign clacks]

Andrew Rea

cookbook. [paper cracks]

Yes. [laughs]

So there's two of 'em.

Andrew Rea cookbook is available now.

Two cookbooks, actually.

My first one is called Eat What You Watch

and it's more of a, kind of a coffee table book.

It's food from movies and it's some very pretty photography

recreating the actual scenes from the movie.

It's cool.

My newer cookbook, the Binging With Babish companion

cookbook is the first hundred recipes from the show

and it is a must have for any Babish fan, young or old.

Maybe not too young because there's some profanity

and drug use.

Andrew Rea restaurant. [paper cracks]

One day.

One day.

I was planning on opening a brew pub this year

but that has been delayed to 2021

'cause I got some big stuff cooking.

Some big things coming out this year.

Very excited to share with you guys.

I can't share it with you just yet

but keep an eye out for it.

A restaurant, or brew pub is very much

in the plans for 2021.

Andre Rea victory. [paper cracks]

You goddamn right.

Did Andrew Rea eat?

Yes. [chuckles]

Yes, I did.

I had a wholesome breakfast this morning.

Single-fried egg with a ring of sriracha around the yolk.

I wasn't even on camera, I just did it for funzies.

Two slices of very thin bacon, which is why I felt like

it was okay two slices, and a slice of wholegrain toast.

And then for lunch I just had a frigging ostrich egg

up in Bon Appetit, go check it out.

Yeah, I ate.

[sign clacks]

What'd we got? [sighs]

Is Andrew Rea

a chef? [paper cracks]

No, I'm not.

And I say that as often as possible

because people will say, Yes, chef,

or they'll be like, Thank you, chef,

or, you know, Chef Andrew Rea in town this week,

or whatever.

And I am not a chef.

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 called--

And a crepe maker at a place called Simply Crepes,

in Rochester.

So no, I'm not a chef, I'm an enthusiastic home cook

and I wanna make that distinction

for two very important reasons.

First off, because I haven't earned that title.

People who are chefs put in their hours

in insane work conditions that I've never had to endure

and also because I am a home cook

and I want people to see what I do and think,

If this doofus can do it, surely I can do it.

So I want people to know that I am a home cook.

I have never had any formal training,

anything like that. [paper cracks]

Is Andrew Rea married?

No, I am not.

I was for a little bit and not anymore.

And I'm not gonna go any deeper into that [chuckles]

out of respect to all those involved.

I am no longer married but I am attached

to a lovely young woman named Jess.

Is Andrew Rea a violinist? [paper cracks]

[laughs]

You guys have a violin?

Do you wanna find out?

You don't have a violin, do you?

[Interviewer] No, but you can play the smallest violin.

[paper cracks]

Is Andrew Rea zero? [laughs]

This is getting into some like theoretical physics here.

Is Andrew Rea zero?

Yes?

Oh [beep], this is actually cool.

I'm dying to get a zero tattoo on my neck

where Lakeith Stanfield has his number three

just because he has his there

and he's the hottest human being alive.

I wanna get one in the same spot that's a zero

'cause I think zero is the most fascinating concept.

There was no symbol for zero in European culture

for hundreds of thousands of years.

I don't know the exact figures, don't quote me on that.

But zero, there was no symbol for it

because it represents the abyss,

it represents the absence of anything

which if you are tied up in dogmatic ideologies

or whatever, you cannot fathom the idea of nothing

and embracing the void

is an important philosophical concept, I think.

So having a symbol that denotes that,

it's like not being afraid of death.

Embracing and jumping into the void.

I really like that concept

and so I really wanna get a zero on my neck

and I'm just hoping it doesn't alienate too many viewers

when I do something like that.

Is Andrew Rea Binging With Babish?

Yes, I am.

Next question. [sing thuds]

[paper cracks] Who is Binging With Babish's

roommate?

Well, so back when I was starting to make the show,

his name was Rashid Daroso.

He is one of my--

Was, that's still his name, he's alive.

He's still living in that apartment.

He is one of my oldest and dearest friends,

probably the oldest friend that I have

'cause he was the first friend that I made

when I moved to a new school in 9th grade.

He's one of my oldest and dearest friends.

We still hang out on the regular.

And he is still up in that apartment

that I was making the show in previous.

Now, I do not have a roommate.

I will soon when I move in with Jess.

How did Binging With Babish

start? [paper cracks]

Quite by accident and the evidence is in the name.

Binging With Babish is kind of a stupid name.

And I picked it arbitrarily after my Reddit handle

as a joke.

I picked my Reddit handle arbitrarily.

Oliver Babish is a character from eight total episodes

of The West Wing.

I like naming online usernames after obscure characters

from TV shows.

For example, an old Reddit username of mine was

Cam Winston from Frasier.

He was Frasier's main antagonist for like two seasons.

You know, anybody who gets it, we're automatically friends.

[chuckles] So anybody who gets Oliver Babish,

I know you've seen enough West Wing

to have memorized that one character.

It's like a litmus test for who's gonna be your buddy.

So it's very clear that I had no intention

of this becoming my career

or anything that I would pursue full time.

And it started when I was just screwing around

in my kitchen.

I set up a camera, Parks and Rec was on in the background,

I wanted to test out my food photography skills,

and Ron and Chris were having a burger cook-off.

And I was like, Hm, what would that taste like?

And was like, Hm, maybe I should just do that on camera

and just make it as sort of an exercise,

a creative exercise.

Now, here we are talking about it on GQ.

[Interviewer] It's WIRED.

[beep] [production team laughs]

Now, we're gonna talk about it on WIRED.

So that's why I named my Reddit handle Oliver Babsih

and then I named the show after my Reddit handle

'cause I was making the show expressly for Reddit.

I never intended it for it to go anywhere else.

That's that.

Now, it's history.

Now, we're talking about it on WIRED.

How Binging With Babish Jon Favreau?

I assume that means how did I like meet him

or how did we get acquainted?

I found out when I, around when I had 800,000

or so subscribers that he was a fan of the show.

He had tweeted about me when I did the Cubano sandwich

and pasta aglio e olio, he tweeted those videos.

And then when I hit a million subscribers,

he tweeted, Congrats on hitting a million subscribers.

And when he did that I had just signed with an agency,

I just signed with William Morris Endeavor.

I asked my agent, which was the most exciting sentence

in the world at the time,

I was like, Can you reach out to Jon's people?

I really wanna do something with him.

He clearly cares about food as a construct

and as a plot device and as a character in movies

and I think he would appreciate what I do.

The same day, his team reached out and they said,

We're making this new cooking show,

which turned out to be Chef Show on Netflix.

We're making this new cooking show.

Would you like to come by and be on that show?

And, in turn, Jon will be on your show.

I was dancing around my apartment.

I was never been so happy in my entire life.

Meeting him was the single most exciting

and important experience of my life.

He gave me advice that I hold dear to my heart, to this day.

He shepherded me into this wild new world

that I've entered into where I'm meeting celebrities

and I'm making things that are seen by millions of people.

He had some words of wisdom about that.

It was several years ago.

It was during the winter Olympics.

And while we were there, somebody tagged him on Instagram.

They were an Olympic luge, luger.

They had Iron Man on their helmet

and they tagged Jon in the photo and he saw it,

and he brought it over to me and was like,

Look at this, this is a almost 10 year old movie

that affected somebody to the point where they put it on

their helmet while they're representing themselves

and their country.

That is the most magical thing that I could imagine

happening from one of my films

is that it could affect somebody to that degree.

This is what's special about what we do.

And first of all, he said, What we do.

He plumped us in the same category,

which blew my [beep] mind. [laughs]

And what he meant was telling stories.

I'm doing it in a much smaller way,

to a much smaller audience,

but I'm telling stories and it creates connections

and it creates communities around the things that you do.

It's such a special experience and it's become

the most important part of what I do.

And so that's one of the many pieces of wisdom

that he dropped on me that day.

And he just shepherded me into this new sort of world.

That was a very long answer

to what I hope that question was about.

We'll see.

[Interviewer] Have you asked him to get on

The Mandalorian yet?

I would be honored, Jon, to be in

The Mandalorian season two.

Call me, you have my number.

He actually has my number and one time he called me

when I was in the shower and I came out and it said

missed call Jon Favreau and my [beep] exploded. [laughs]

[paper cracks] How does Binging With Babish

cook a steak? [laughs]

Got really oddly specific towards the end.

Really depends on the steak,

is the correct answer to that question.

Skirt steak or something thin that needs high heat,

you're blasting it with heat in a pan and that's it.

You're just charring the [beep] out of it

and keeping it mediumish on a skirt steak

because you can cook it a little bit more

and it will still stay tender and juicy.

We're getting in the ribeye territory,

you know steakhouse-thick steak territory.

I'm a big fan of the reverse sear.

I like it either way, searing and then finishing in the oven

or oven and then finishing in the pan.

It's the best way to get steakhouse-like results.

And also butter basting.

Butter baste your steaks, for God's sake.

Almost any steak, I would say, you should do that.

That's how I cook steak.

[sign clacks]

And medium rare, depending on the steak again,

but medium rare.

Did Binging With Babish

[paper cracks] go to culinary school?

I did not, that's a good question.

I'm a very avid home enthusiast.

I've considered a few times going to culinary school

to amp up my chops since I host a cooking show

but any skills that I have you've seen me sharpen them

over the years.

If you go back and watch some of my videos

from four years ago you're gonna see me do some stuff

that I would not do now

and that's because I'm learning right along with you.

Why does Binging With Babish use kosher salt?

I'll tell you why.

Because kosher salt is the perfect texture for pinching.

It's the size of the grain, really, that counts.

With table salt, you can't pinch, you have to sprinkle it

and it's very salty because in a teaspoon of table salt

you have much more salt

because of how small the granules are.

There's a lot more salt in any given volume,

be it a teaspoon or a tablespoon,

than there would be or a teaspoon

or a tablespoon of kosher salt.

So it's more forgiving in measured recipes

and with seasoning things you don't measure like,

you know you're just seasoning your eggs or

something you're sauteing, it's much more forgiving.

And you wanna do that with your hands,

you wanna feel how much salt you're putting into the dish.

So you can pinch it,

that's the great thing about kosher salt

is you can pinch it.

You could use sea salt, you could use anything else

that you could pinch.

You could use Maldon flaky salt

but that's more of a finishing salt

'cause it has texture to it.

It's big and flaky and crunchy.

I, and most chefs, like kosher salt because it's forgiving,

you can pinch it, you can feel how much salt is going

into the dish.

It's an essential part of like really understanding

why food behaves the way it does.

Is Binging With Babish

allergic to bananas? [paper cracks]

I don't know.

Honestly, I don't know.

The only reason I think I'm allergic to bananas

is because I ate a banana the day before my wedding

and I blew up like a frigging balloon.

I turned red and I doubled in size and volume.

Had to drive myself to the hospital

and the only thing I'd eaten that day was a banana

so I've always assumed it was bananas since then.

And the only way to disprove it is to eat a banana

in front of a physician and have him just sitting there

with the epinephrine just waiting to inject me.

And it's just too scary of an experience

and I don't care enough about bananas to

go through that, so we'll see.

Thank you, internet, so much for these awesome

and sometimes befuddling questions.

Thank you, WIRED for having me

and keep cooking.

I will if you will.