El-Waylly departed Bon Appetit in August after failed negotiations. Her new show is her own, pushing her to deploy her talent, charm and encyclopedic culinary chops to solve challenges.
“My creativity comes from being put in difficult situations,” El-Waylly says during a break from shooting an episode. The series riffs on a game show, with a spinning wheel that determines which challenge El-Waylly will take on.
In the second episode, in which she relies only on items bought at a bodega to create a tasting menu, El-Waylly pours hot water over crisps to rinse off the fat and make a mashed potato-esque purée. She expects it to “be gross.” But as she tastes it, a look of sheer satisfaction comes over her face.
Leaving Bon Appetit for an independent YouTube channel could be considered risky, but the payoffs were noticeable almost immediately.
The three months it took to create the whole Stump Sohla series was about how long it would take to produce one Bon Appetit video, El-Waylly says, given the hurdles of working at a large company with corporate red tape.
Now, she says, “you can just have an idea and go with it while you’re still excited”.
Her show is the first addition into the expanding “Babish Culinary Universe”, a rebrand of Andrew Rea’s popular “Binging With Babish” channel. Just weeks after it started, Stump Sohla is driving an average of 2.3 million views per post, and added 30,000 new subscribers to the channel in one day, according to YouTube figures.
“Binging With Babish” started in February 2006 as a cooking programme that recreated meals from pop culture and TV shows (the name pays homage to a West Wing character). Over 14 years, Rea had a slew of viral hits.
The Moist Maker, a Thanksgiving leftover sandwich from Friends, put him on the map, Rea says. The simple Italian pasta dish featured in Chef, earned more than 8.6 million views. And the titular dish from “Ratatouille” is his most-viewed video, with more than 24.4 million views.
“We’re doing everything we can to not let the pandemic interrupt our growth,” Rea says. “Because I think now more than ever, not only are people turning to YouTube for entertainment, but also just for escapism.”
Since the pandemic stopped life in its tracks in mid-March, the average daily views of videos with “cook with me” in the title have increased by over 100 per cent, according to data provided by YouTube.
Earnest Pettie, who leads YouTube’s global trends research, says that food trends at the beginning of the pandemic included sourdough bread, then Dalgona coffee, Basque burnt cheesecake and now “island” cakes.
The recipe for a successful YouTube channel, he says, is including people in a social conversation that teaches them something new or helps them feel better about themselves.
But the most important ingredient is authenticity – an “it” factor that can’t be manufactured, Rea says. It’s the difference between YouTube content and a television cooking show where all you see is “this beautiful, perfect person making beautiful, perfect food on their first try”.
And that was what Rea says drove him to direct message El-Waylly on Instagram in June, and ultimately decide she was the perfect person to help him expand his digital food network.
“We’ve been waiting for the opportunity to find somebody new for the channel that was a great fit for our culture and philosophy of being goofballs and having fun while being entertaining and informative, and she embodies that and so much more,” Rea says.
After leaving Bon Appetit, El-Waylly initially announced she would still create digital and magazine content for the brand. But she recently said on Instagram that she had ended her “relationship” with the brand. Several of her fellow test kitchen colleagues have also left.
When asked if El-Waylly’s exit from Bon Appetit and the void left by its hiatus was impetus for Rea’s expansion of his channel, he says no, adding “that’s not really how YouTube works. People decide what they want to watch and who they want to lift up,” he says.
The Canadian who’s Malaysia’s top YouTube food personality
Rea has long had a devoted following on his channel, which YouTube data shows is among the top food programmes on the platform, with more than 8 million subscribers and over 1.5 billion channel views.
He has been building the channel’s offerings for years, adding a beginner friendly show called Basics With Babish in 2017 and expanding into lifestyle content two years later with Being With Babish. It features Rea travelling across the country connecting with fans.
That evolution, and frequent crossover episodes with other YouTube personalities and celebrities, gave way to Babish Culinary Universe – a name Rea says was suggested by fans as a nod to the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
A crossover El-Waylly wants to make happen? A collaboration with Sean Evans’ popular Hot Ones series, where guests eat increasingly spicy chicken wings while being interviewed – but she wants to make all the hot sauces herself.
One of the lessons Rea has learned over his YouTube career is to always film every time you cook. He noted that the audience really responds to his process – namely, his mistakes.
“I want people to see it’s OK to make mistakes because they’re learning opportunities,” he says. “Everything that I am and everything that I have been able to do is the product of me being able to learn from and grow from my mistakes.”
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