The test kitchen staff
Bon Appétit is an American food magazine. In publication since 1956, the magazine has gained growing notoriety for its YouTube channel, launched in 2012. Initially releasing hands-and-pans style cooking tutorials, the channel has grown in popularity in part because of its move to hosted content. Filmed and hosted from the test kitchen in the One World Trade Centre, the various shows the channel hosts are usually driven by some form of gimmick; fermentation, recreating foods from sense alone, recreating foods but gourmet and so on. However, it's the personalities that host the show that makes them endearing.
In the spring of 2020, riding on the wave of "Black Lives Matter" protests, a long series of descriptions of institutionalized racism, toxic workplace environments and systematic under-payment of non-white contributors from several staff members surfaced. This led to the eventual resignation of Bon Appétit Editor-in-chief Adam Rapaport, as well as well over half the test kitchen staff leaving the channel and/or Bon Appétit entirely. The channel took a long hiatus after this, returning in the autumn with several newly hired people of color front and center, with only Brad and Chris confirming that they'd be staying.
Among the staff featured on the channel include:
- Andy Baraghani (Senior Food Editor)
- Molly Baz (Senior Food Editor)
- Rhoda Boone (Food Director, Video)
- Christina Chaey (Associate Editor)
- Alex Delany (Drinks Editor)
- Sohla El-Waylly (Assistant Food Editor)
- Matt Hunziker (Editor and Video Director)
- Priya Krishna (Contributing Writer)
- Brad Leone (Test Kitchen Video Host)
- Rick Martinez (Contributing Food Editor)
- Gaby Melian (Test Kitchen Manager)
- Chris Morocco (Test Kitchen Director)
- Carla Lalli Music (Food Editor at Large)
- Claire Saffitz (Contributing Food Editor)
- Dan Siegel (Video Director)
- Amiel Stanek (Editor at Large)
Shows on Bon Appétit:
- Alex Eats It All: Alex Delaney attempts to eat as many of one dish in a region as he can in a limited amount of time.
- Almost Every: Amiel Stanek experiments with almost every way one could reasonably (and often unreasonably) cook an ingredient of the day.
- BA's Baking School: Claire Saffitz teaches how to bake over the course of multiple videos. Originally exclusive to the Bon Appétit app.
- Back-to-Back Chef: Carla Lalli Music cooks along with and instructs a celebrity in preparing a dish while facing away from each other and using only verbal instructions. Pro chefs Bobby Flay, Daniel Boulud, and Gordon Ramsay have also guest-hosted episodes.
- From the Test Kitchen: Various members of staff and contributors teach their recipes from the Bon Appétit magazine.
- Gourmet Makes: Gourmet Pastry Chef Claire Saffitz recreates popular snacks and candies while steadily losing her sanity.
- It's Alive! with Brad: Scatterbrained Joisey Bunny-Ears Lawyer Brad Leone teaches fermentation and live foods while his cameraman and editor turn the show into a surrealist comedy.
- It's Alive: Goin' Places: Travel documentary spinoff for the Bon Appétit app with a more restrained production and greater emphasis on the environment. Except the two-part season 3, which is just mainline It's Alive in all but name.
- Making Perfect: Series made for the Bon Appétit app. The test kitchen staff break off into duos to develop the perfect recipes for pizza (season 1) and Thanksgiving dinner (season 2).
- Molly Tries: Molly Baz is led down a breadcrumb trail on the way to learning a new skill, be it survival cooking, harvesting Iberico ham, and cooking ostrich eggs.
- One of Everything: Alex Delaney and a guest from the test kitchen try one of everything on the menu at one of New York's famous restaurants.
- Reverse Engineering: Supertaster Chris Morocco attempts to recreate a famous chef's dish through his senses of taste, touch and smell alone, and maybe an 80s montage or two.
- Test Kitchen Talks: The test kitchen staff compete in cooking challenges, answer cooking questions, or are simply filmed being themselves for YouTube.
Bon Appétit provides examples of:
- April Fools' Day:
- During 2019, they canceled all shows and became an ASMR channel.
- During 2020, the hosts exchanged shows, with Chris and Brad hosting Gourmet Makes, Molly Back to Back Chef and Claire It's Alive.
- Bond Gun Barrel: The cold open for Rick makes Apple Cider Doughnuts is a parody of this with donuts.
- Cluster F-Bomb: Wooo boy, where to begin? Expect most of these to come from either Chris, Molly, or Brad. Especially Chris.
- Character Development: Chris Morocco started out as a quiet, aloof "Well Done, Daughter!" Guy to Claire, but grew into a foul-mouthed, quietly hilarious Team Dad.
- Cooking Show: The majority of videos are members of staff teaching recipes or cooking tips. How straightforward this is varies; From the Test Kitchen is a classical example. It's Alive! is not.
- Foil:
- Laid-back, practical, working-class Joisey boy Brad and artistic, intellectual, high-strung Harvard alumnae Claire.
- Brad also has this kind of relationship with Andy, which reached a fever pitch with Making Perfect: Thanksgiving.
- Like an Old Married Couple: Andy describes him and Brad as this in Making Perfect: Thanksgiving, and it's most visible in that series and the gravlax episode of It's Alive!.
- Mad Artist: Sohla. Ask her to cook something relatively conventional, and she will cook it in a relatively conventional way. Give her free rein, and you end up with things like a "Pasta Carbonara" consisting of spaghetti-and-candied-bacon funnel cake with egg yolk and Parmesan ice cream and pasta water espuma.
- Pragmatic Adaptation: Thanks to the 2020 Global Pandemic, the hosts had to shoot videos from home with instructions of the crew via Video Conference. To reflect the change, some shows changed their name:
- From the Test Kitchen became From the Home Kitchen
- Test Kitchen Talks became Test Kitchen Talks @ Home
- It's Alive became It's Alive Home Video Edition
- Back-to-Back Chef became Side-by-Side Chef
- Gourmet Makes is a special case. Since Claire does not have the Test Kitchen at her disposal, they have decided to remake some of her original makes into something friendly for home kitchens. They call it Gourmet Remakes
- Scandalgate: The Sumacgate during Making Perfect: Thanksgiving
- Sir Swears-a-Lot: Chris, especially certain times when he's really pissed. Interestingly enough, he started out as quiet and somewhat aloof before shifting into the Team Dad personality that he's more well-known as.
- Sitcom Arch-Nemesis: Brad's is "DELANY", to the point that he has even described the man as "My nemesis!" and will blame any screw-ups on set on Delany, whether or not he is in the room. How much is a joke for the cameras and how much is real is unknown.
- Telethon: The Bon Appetit Variety Show Live
- Vitriolic Best Buds: Brad and Claire flow into a platonic form of this dynamic, both of them being Happily Married to other people. The laid-back and dopey-seeming Brad and the intellectual, perfectionist Claire clearly rub each other the wrong way in the worst of ways, but Claire will also effusively praise Brad when his practical skills pull her fat out of the fire (which happens more often than you might think). Brad, meanwhile, tends to run his mouth, which does not make Claire happier when she is stressing out over a project, but will often give Claire the praise she craves at the end of a project.
