How Hosting Epic Meal Time Completely Changed My Life for the Better
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Food

How Hosting Epic Meal Time Completely Changed My Life for the Better

Back in 2010, I was a journalism student unsure of my direction in life. I just wanted to write about the dope stuff that I was into, like sports or music, but all of my classes were focused on producing news programming, reporting, or writing news copy. None of that seemed that fun or exciting, and I didn't have much else going on in life.

The summer between my first and second year was a particularly dull one. My friends and I would hang out every day in my parent's backyard in our small suburb of Montreal, called Dollard-Des-Ormeaux. When things got excessively boring, we would cook. That evolved into some pretty wild feasts. The more bored we were, the bigger the meal we'd prepare. One day we'd make a Mexican fiesta featuring enormous nachos and tacos with full pizzas as the shell, and the next day we'd whip up hamburgers wrapped in bacon and stuffed inside of a puff pastry crust. After a handful of these occurrences, someone got the bright idea to film it.

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I actually missed the very first day of filming because I was working as a basketball instructor at a summer camp, but I'll never forget coming home to see what my friends had made. They went out and picked up fast-food items from several different locations, threw it all on a pizza, then tossed the whole thing in the oven to bake. It wasn't our wildest creation of the summer, but it definitely made an entertaining video. We dubbed it "Epic Meal Time," and it sat on a laptop for months. We'd regularly make small tweaks and edits until one day, months later, we released it into the world.

We expected it to make the rounds within our community of friends and family and get a couple of laughs. We certainly didn't expect the video to get 100,000 views in a single week.

Today, you can't scroll through your Facebook news feed without seeing 300 different videos showing you how to prepare every dish under the sun. But keep in mind, this was in 2010, before the whole Internet food craze. Now we live in a time when people have made careers out of creating viral content. But we succeeded before "YouTuber" was even in the American lexicon.

Once the initial shock of the first video wore down, we decided to try it again. Our second video, a toasted baguette filled with eggs, hot dogs and maple syrup—aptly named "The Angry French Canadian"—exploded to 300,000 views in the first week. From there, we kept making videos, and the number of viewers continued to grow. By week five, our Thanksgiving special hit a million views when we stuffed a quail into a duck, which was stuffed inside a hen, which was stuffed inside a chicken, which was stuffed inside a turkey, which was stuffed inside a full pig. Without any real culinary experience or any intent to make this a career, this habit of creating high-calorie meals and throwing them onto the Internet had suddenly become our lives.

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I continued with my degree, but it's hard to focus on the biography of John Milton when you need to schedule your flights to Hollywood around your exam schedule. Our show was blowing up, and contrary to what many may think, I wasn't just eating pounds of bacon every week. I was writing for each character on the show and preparing scripts for every episode, helping conceptualize each insane meal we'd attempt, acting in episodes, filming, editing, graphic design, and every little thing in between.

I was finally feeling fulfilled, like my creativity was being properly displayed—even if in reality we were essentially just pouring Jack Daniels on piles of bacon and yelling. To this day, I'm still not sure if we just hit the whole bacon craze at the exact opportune time, or if we're the ones who actually started it. We were just a couple of friends having a few drinks and getting creative in the kitchen. Not only were people eating it up, but we were actually shaping popular culture.

One week we'd get millions of views for making lasagna out of 45 fast food burgers, and the next week we'd get a couple more million views by making a full pizza composed of gummies and assorted candy. Suddenly, we were getting flown out places to film episodes, and companies were paying absurd amounts of money to collaborate with us. We started to perform live shows in front of huge crowds across North America and we were slowly climbing up the ranks as one of the most successful YouTube channels of all time. After less than two years, we were living and working out of a mansion in the Hollywood Hills, and the likes of Kevin Smith, Tony Hawk, and Tom Green were stopping by on the regular just to hang out.

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I can still recall one of the most unfathomable moments; the whole crew was at a local movie theatre when someone noticed us. By then, we were pretty accustomed to the typical comments: "Hey, are you the bacon guys?" or "Oh man, it's the Jack Daniels guys from YouTube!" But this day, one person looked up at us with total amazement, slowly pointed his finger and mumbled "food!" That was it; we had successfully become the face of food—or at least eating.

We were rockstars in an Internet age where you don't need to play any instruments or make any music to be treated as such. I was once in a bar in New York and Skrillex walked over to my table because HE recognized ME from across the bar. It's still too surreal to totally comprehend.

Tyler's Celebrity Photo Album: Skrillex Edition Part 2

A photo posted by Tyler Lemco (@tlemco) on Oct 27, 2012 at 10:29am PDT

I'm still not completely comfortable with the notion, to be honest with you. Here I was, just a random guy who picked his nose and stuffed his face in some Internet videos, and I was suddenly "somebody." I made friends with actual celebrities, I gained thousands and thousands of social media followers, and couldn't leave the house or go anywhere without getting stopped for pictures (which shouldn't be taken as a complaint, because I always love it), all because I stuffed my face with greasy meats. My mug has been on TMZ, The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, the front page of every major website and plastered on a 30-foot mural in Montreal, all because I let the world watch me gain 40 pounds over a three-year span.

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Ain't nobody fuckin with ma clique. @epicmook @princeatari @tonyhawk @tomgreenlive @harleyplays A photo posted by Tyler Lemco (@tlemco) on Feb 27, 2013 at 6:37pm PST

During that time, we caught a lot of flack for our unhealthy habits, but I've undergone every medical test there is, and aside from gaining weight, I've suffered no long-lasting negative effects to my health. People assumed our excessive meals left a lot of wasted food, but we were surprisingly efficient when it came to this show based on abundance. Whatever we cooked would act as leftovers at our office throughout the week.

The show did teach me some lessons, though. And in a way, food taught me what I wanted. At a time when I was just going through the motions and unsure of my future, bacon strips showed me that I love to entertain. I never had a passion for food in a culinary sense; I always just liked what I liked and would eat what I thought tasted good. In fact, I don't even really know what I'm doing in a kitchen, yet I'm probably one of the most famous chefs on the planet. Food (extraordinarily unhealthy junk food in particular) has brought me to where I am today and I could not be happier.

Like all good things, my tenure with the show came to an end. There were obviously some ups and some downs to the whole experience, and by the end it had run it's course and was ultimately time for me to stretch my wings and do my own thing. Without sounding too cocky, I take a lot of pride in the fact that I played an integral part in not only creating something that millions of people enjoyed, but in getting the ball rolling on an entire cultural movement.

Since starting one of the most popular online cooking shows of all time, I've parlayed Internet popularity into a career where I write for some of my favorite websites, produce cool video content, and manage social media accounts for a number of large clients. I've learned so much, I've met so many cool people, I've acquired so many valuable skills, and I've been able to experience and enjoy so many awesome things that I never thought possible. I guess what I'm really trying to say is, "Thanks, bacon."