Making Food TV in 2026

Growing up, I loved to watch “Food TV.” I was a passionate home cook, fascinated by stand-and-stir cooking shows like East Meets West and Lidia’s Italian Table. But the idea of “having my own food show,” never occurred to me. Literally not one time.

But as of this week, Barbecue Smokeout, the outdoor cooking show that I star in with my longtime friend and collaborator Kevin Bludso, is streaming on Netflix. It is a really fun show: just two friends shooting the shit, cracking jokes and cooking outside down by the lake in Corsicana, Texas. Today I thought I’d share how the path that lead me here.

After studying literature and playwriting in college, I made a living waiting tables and bartending, while also writing about food for local newspapers and magazines. Then in 2012, I got an unsolicited Facebook message from a producer at a production company, asking me to audition for a “food news show.” I went in two or three times, and then all of a sudden I was hired as the host of a YouTube food show. It is very dated, and a wild throwback to an older era of Internet. But they paid me actual money (not a lot of it, but some), and perhaps more importantly, I got tons of reps talking into a camera. As a funny side note, that “food news show” quickly devolved into being about an elitist snob (me), sampling fast food trends and flavored vodkas, then saying they are capitalist abominations so that people could write in the comments to call me an asshole. What a time.

The channel, and the company backing it, were struggling financially, but since we were the cheapest show on their platform, they had us keep making it. Somehow, we shot over 400 episodes. I felt like I snuck in the back door of the lowest rung of food “television,” and was frankly thrilled to have the opportunity.

While this was going on, another surprising career path came about for me: becoming a chef. Somewhere during this time, I interviewed local BBQ legend Kevin Bludso down at the original Compton location of Bludso’s BBQ. That interview was the start of what has become a 15-year friendship. Kevin was my first true culinary mentor, training me on the BBQ pits of Compton, California before making me the opening chef of the flagship location of Bludso’s BBQ in Los Angeles. We also went on to write an award-winning cookbook together. We wrote the bulk of it, in fact, during peak Covid, down at Kevin’s house on the lake in Corsicana, Texas. I even got to write an article about that experience.

Meanwhile, that YouTube show was long gone, as was the company that launched it. I would occasionally get tapped to appear on a random food show like Chopped, or Food: Fact or Fiction? But I would often think about how much fun it would be to make “an old school stand-and-stir cooking show.” I talked about it with my friend Ben Leavitt, a really talented director, showrunner and children’s book author. In April of 2022, we launched a YouTube channel named after my first cookbook (and the Covid-era livestream cooking show my wife and I made). It was called Don’t Panic Pantry.

We were really proud of the show and had a great time making it. We aired 127 episodes and…nobody cared. Not “nobody,” but from a financial growth standpoint, basically nobody. We were hoping to build an audience over time, but after a while, the views started going down instead of up. Everyone who watched it really seemed to enjoy it, but “the algorithm” or maybe “our middle-aged inability to understand the Internet,” made it stop making sense to produce.

But what we did have was a library of content that we really liked. I reached out to some colleagues, and one friend connected me with the people over at Tastemade, a digital media company with shows streaming over multiple platforms. We were able to license our show to them, cutting our YouTube episodes into traditional “22-minute” versions with commercial breaks. They paid us real money, which allowed us to keep making more things. The strength of those videos — and honestly, Ben’s uncanny ability to shoot, direct, do sound and edit them — got us other jobs too. One example I’m really proud of this video we got to make for Washington Dairy with acclaimed and author chef Renee Erickson.

It showed the value in tenacity and cold-pitching. It also showed how quickly the entertainment and media landscape was changing. Friends of mine in film and television production were unemployed for the first times in their careers, and debating taking jobs making corporate training videos for mega-corporations in industries like big agriculture, pharmaceutical drugs, and AI. It sucked. “We’ll never have a show on Netflix,” I told Ben. “But if we can find a way to keep making shows, it would be really damn fun.”

Companies like Tastemade were finding a way to survive, and to continue producing shows. Meanwhile Ben and I, with our experience making 127 episodes of a 2-person cooking show, were uniquely qualified to make shows with a much lower budget than traditional cooking shows were typically made for. We were able to “punch above our weight.”

So when Tastemade asked me if I had any ideas for “an outdoor cooking show,” I knew exactly what it should be: Kevin Bludso and me, hanging out and cooking down on the lake in Corsicana. It would be more expensive than me cooking alone in my backyard in Los Angeles — but I knew it would be a much better show with Kevin’s BBQ expertise an on-camera skills, as well as our 15-year relationship to play off of. I also, frankly, wanted an excuse to get to hang out with my friend again.

With that, Barbecue Smokeout was born. We shot 5 episodes with a very small crew, for as little money as we possibly could, and those episodes did surprisingly well on Tastemade’s multiple streaming platforms. People seemed to like an old school cooking show, with two friends hanging out and cooking outside.

They picked us up for another 5 episode batch, which we shot earlier this year (and are airing now). Shortly after the first episode of this new season began to air, we learned that our show was one of a handful that were licensed to Netflix, and Season 3 is expected to start shooting later this year.

In the end, the best part of making a food tv show is the act of actually making it. I hope you all watch and enjoy, and they let us keep on doing it.

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