Binging with Babish is a YouTube cooking channel created by American filmmaker Andrew Rea, alias Oliver Babish, which recreates recipes featured in film, television, and video games, as well as more traditional recipes in the Basics with Babish series. The first video in the series was uploaded on February 10, 2016, and the channel currently has over 7 million subscribers.
History
The YouTube channel was created by Rea on August 21, 2006; his name was inspired by The West Wing character Oliver Babish. Three videos unrelated to Binging with Babish were uploaded to the account, two in 2007 and one in 2010. The first episode of Binging with Babish aired on February 10, 2016, which is about a Parks and Recreation burger cook-off. For the first 20 episodes, Binging with Babish used the opening lines of the Frasier theme song, "Tossed Salads and Scrambled Eggs," performed by Kelsey Grammer. In later episodes of season 1, the Frasier theme was omitted in order to avoid intellectual property rights issues as he started to monetize the videos. The show now begins with a clip of the food item being recreated, followed by Rea entering the kitchen while welcoming the viewers. Initially, Rea primarily used electronic rock band Ratatat's song "Cream on Chrome" as background music in episodes, but since monetizing his channel the majority of episodes now use a variety of songs by royalty-free composer Broke For Free. In the earlier episodes, Rea's face was not shown on camera, only his shirt and apron, accompanied by Rea's voice-over. Its first video to be widely circulated aired on November 14, 2016, making the "Moistmaker" sandwich from Friends. The channel's growth has been driven by fans promoting its videos on Reddit and other social media platforms. Rea created a Patreon account to earn an income, and after reaching a monthly $10,000 goal, quit his day job to work full-time on Binging with Babish, which is released weekly on Tuesdays. He spent $6,000 on a Sonydigital camera, lights and editing software, and does the production, editing and narration for the videos. The cost of each episode, according to Rea, "varies wildly" because of the ever-changing variety of food and ingredients used. Rea posts recipes for the dishes on his website and on October 3, 2017, he published a cookbook titled Eat What You Watch: A Cookbook for Movie Lovers, containing 40 recipes featured in film. He started the series Basics with Babish on October 12, 2017, teaching preparation of basic recipes, stocking up on and using essential tools and equipment for cooking, as well as a variety of cooking techniques. On March 19, 2019, at the end of a video that involved recreating the iconic cake from the Portal series of video games, Rea premiered a trailer for his new show, Being with Babish, which premiered on March 22, 2019. The new show focuses on Rea giving back to his fans and to the people who have helped him in his various episodes. For April Fools' Day 2019, he released a video titled "Binging with Babish: Brock's Donuts from Pokémon," where he made rice ball-shaped doughnuts to make fun of4Kids Entertainment changing rice balls in the original Pokémon anime into doughnuts. This was immediately followed by a video where he "corrected" his error by making proper onigiri. On October 22, 2019, Rea published his second cookbook titled Binging with Babish: 100 Recipes Recreated from Your Favorite Movies and TV Shows, containing 100 pop-culture recipes from his series.
Format
During each episode, Rea prepares step-by-step instructions on the preparation of film and television-related meals. The show is typically filmed at his torso, in the kitchen of his New York City apartment with a voice-over added in post-production. Each episode contains dry humor and is paced at a fast speed. After creating the dish as it originally appeared, some episodes include Rea's interpretation of the recipe. The show has featured many guest appearances from other YouTube creators who cook alongside Rea, such as Cocktail Chemistry's Nick Fisher, Ashwin Ramdas from Ashwin Enjoys Nature, You Suck At Cooking, Brad Leone and Sohla El-Waylly from Bon Appétit, and First We Feast's Sean Evans. Rea has also appeared as a guest star on Evans's series Hot Ones. Rea's 4 million subscribers video featured a special guest appearance by Iron Chef Masaharu Morimoto, who assisted Rea in creating the Death Sandwich from Regular Show. On some occasions, Rea has hosted actors from the shows and films the recipes are sourced from. As part of production on their cooking series The Chef Show, filmmaker/actor Jon Favreau and chef Roy Choi appeared in an episode to make chocolate lava cakes from Favreau's film Chef, one of Rea's favorite films which he has featured numerous times on the show. Favreau ended the episode by presenting Rea with the carving fork prop used in a prominent scene from the film. Maisie Williams of Game of Thrones fame appeared in an episode where she and Rea attempted to recreate Direwolf Bread. Williams, a fan of Binging with Babish, arranged her guest appearance after messaging multiple YouTube food channels about appearing on one of their shows while she was in New York. During the COVID-19 pandemic, actor H. Jon Benjamin appeared over video call to make margaritas from Archer.
Biography
Andrew Douglas Rea was born in Mendon, New York and raised in Rochester, to parents Annie and Douglas Rea. He has an older brother, David. His nephew, Christopher, made an appearance in one of his videos portraying a younger version of himself. He is of Polish, Italian and Welsh descent. Rea was taught to cook at a young age by his mother, who died when he was 11. In 2009, Rea graduated with a BA in Film Studies from Hofstra University and later worked as a visual effects artist for SwitchFX Inc.
