I spent about four hours over the last few days obsessively watching J. Kenji Lopez Alt videos on youtube. There is something magnetic about him. The kitchen is nice, but also messy in a real way. There is no veil of perfection about his home. Sometimes he has to pause recording to get his kid a bowl of blueberries, sometimes the dog comes in for a piece of pepperoni. Sometimes he calls his wife out for scratching the surface of his 20 year old non-stick pan.
He’s a total nerd in the most charming sense. Some videos he gets himself on a kick about pressure, temperature, and cooking times. He talks himself in a spiral that only a physicist could follow. The food he cooks on his videos looks downright delectable. After watching hours of these videos I am pretty sure we are friends. He’ll be inviting me over for dinner after we get our vaccines.
As of yesterday, my oranges are sliced to perfection, my knives are sharp, my cast iron seasoned and my food truly tastes better. All thanks to this guy who at first glance appears pretty regular. But he's not regular at all in the sense that he doesn’t hide all of the parts of himself that most of the rest of us are tucking away.
It’s hard to fully pinpoint my attraction to him and his life, but at the end of the day I want what he has. I want the house, dogs and a mighty collection of pots and pans, but more importantly I want to act like my most authentic self so deeply and pervasively that others can’t help but enjoy my company (digitally or otherwise).
I've already purchased two new kitchen tools, that's the easy part of emulating his life. There's the little piece of me that thinks if I just have all of the products he has, then that's it, right? But I know better. That's the easy part; the part that this country was made for: buy this thing if you want to be like this person. What he really has is an ability to be authentic online without insecurity or apology. So, now onto the hard part: how do you show up on the internet in 2021 and be 100% yourself?
The dog bowls! The nearly empty coffee mug! The Chinese Cleaver! What a guy.