Andrew Rea\u2019s \u2018try, fail and try again\u2019 YouTube cookery show \u2013 in which he often cooks food from films and cartoons \u2013 gets more viewers than Nigella, Jamie Oliver and Tom Kerridge combined. But its massive, viral success nearly cost the self-taught chef his mental health<\/p>\n
Andrew Rea is one of the biggest chefs in the world, though that\u2019s no guarantee you\u2019ve heard of him. He has no TV show. No restaurant ever bore his name. He has never worked as a chef, nor attended culinary school. He is almost entirely self-taught, he says, from watching cookery videos online. This isn\u2019t hard to believe. To watch Rea cook is as much an instruction of what not to do. Sauces are surrendered. Souffl\u00e9s are sunk. He once took seven attempts to make cacio e pepe, a pasta dish famous for including just cheese and pepper. He succeeds mostly because he fails. It\u2019s part of the charm. He\u2019s not, he\u2019ll happily admit, a professional cook in any meaningful sense \u2013 apart from the fact that he now earns millions doing it.<\/p>\n
Rea\u2019s YouTube cookery channel, Babish Culinary Universe <\/a>\u2013 named after his favourite character from The West Wing<\/em>, a slightly incongruous call that rapidly became too big to fiddle with \u2013 currently boasts 9.5m subscribers. That\u2019s a lot. Nigella Lawson\u2019s latest TV series \u2013 Eat, Cook, Repeat<\/a><\/em>, which aired during England\u2019s second national lockdown \u2013 was considered a ratings smash with 3m viewers, over 1m more than her previous show. Rea\u2019s videos, meanwhile, regularly rack up hits in the tens of millions.<\/p>\n
![](\"https:\/\/i.guim.co.uk\/img\/media\/546f0040c41728a8c32daea77cbda5f35e02781b\/0_549_8192_4915\/master\/8192.jpg?width=140&quality=85&auto=format&fit=max&s=b9d35acb4a0c4188d7081b2e67a9f672\" "\\"Andrew")
Andrew Rea\u2019s \u2018try, fail and try again\u2019 YouTube cookery show \u2013 in which he often cooks food from films and cartoons \u2013 gets more viewers than Nigella, Jamie Oliver and Tom Kerridge combined. But its massive, viral success nearly cost the self-taught chef his mental healthAndrew Rea is one of the biggest chefs in the world, though that\u2019s no guarantee you\u2019ve heard of him. He has no TV show. No restaurant ever bore his name. He has never worked as a chef, nor attended culinary school. He is almost entirely self-taught, he says, from watching cookery videos online. This isn\u2019t hard to believe. To watch Rea cook is as much an instruction of what not to do. Sauces are surrendered. Souffl\u00e9s are sunk. He once took seven attempts to make cacio e pepe, a pasta dish famous for including just cheese and pepper. He succeeds mostly because he fails. It\u2019s part of the charm. He\u2019s not, he\u2019ll happily admit, a professional cook in any meaningful sense \u2013 apart from the fact that he now earns millions doing it.