The British Influencer Invasion!
Topjaw, Eating with Tod, Jolly and Thomas Straker in America. Words by Aaron Timms. Illustration by Alex Brenchley.
Good morning, and welcome to Vittles Restaurants. In today’s special dispatch from Issue 1 of our magazine, Aaron Timms reports on the invasion of America by a new wave of British food influencers — Topjaw, Eating with Tod, Jolly and Thomas Straker — and asks ‘what is it about privately-educated Englishmen that has such a hold over American society?’
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The British Influencer Invasion!
Topjaw, Eating with Tod, Jolly and Thomas Straker in America, by Aaron Timms
Ever since John, Paul, George and Ringo touched down at JFK airport in 1964, the British have been masters at feeding America back to itself. Today that metaphor works increasingly literally, as a fresh generation of British food influencers crosses the Atlantic with the aim of cracking – and eating – America. Topjaw, Eating with Tod and Jolly are among the leaders of this wave; more recently, they’ve been joined by chef Thomas Straker, a kitchen ‘bad boy’ so wild and unpredictable he is planning to capitalise on his online fame by doing the unthinkable and opening a restaurant in New York. These social media gourmands share a background (private school), a dress sense (gap-year casual) and a skin colour (white); their success in ingratiating themselves to the locals offers proof of the enduring hold that posh-sounding English blokes with floppy hair have over the American psyche.
All of these influencers are creatures of video, existing in a permanent state of reel-packaged wow. But they each bring unique stylistic inflections and gimmicks to the earnest work of staying maximally amazed. Topjaw are a classic dom–sub duo in which one slightly better-looking friend (Jesse Burgess) commands the screen, while the other (Will Warr) is relegated to camera duties, rarely appearing in videos unless it’s to squint from a small gimp box tucked into a corner and say something like, ‘Er, what’s that mate?’ Jolly are another pair of ‘best friends’ who mostly operate on YouTube (‘We’re Josh and Ollie, and we’re very Jolly :D’ announces their bio, which gives a sense of the irrepressible smileyness of their online output); they strike me as the type of guys who put ‘haha’ at the end of every text to make sure it’s clear that they’re in a good mood.
Toby Inskip, the man behind Eating with Tod, has a sheer, hand-rubbing enthusiasm for the business of tucking in; indeed, the hand rub is his visual signature, usually performed with mouth agape and eyes bulging, a Soyjak-lite expression Inskip maintains through bone pulls, cheese spills, crumb displays and taco squeezes. Then there’s Straker, who’s notable in this universe not so much for the food he eats (though his mouth is a site of regular violence) as for what he makes: wood-fire cookery, seasonal small plates, and spunked-up British classics (pies, pasties, mashes and roasts) that follow contemporary dining trends so militantly they often seem like they’ve been generated by an algorithm. (Straker’s father was second in command of the SAS, so perhaps there’s a genetic explanation for this martial discipline.)
“A monkey left to its own devices in front of a typewriter may eventually produce the complete works of Shakespeare, but a British food influencer hitting their phone keys at random will only ever end up recommending that visitors to New York eat a pastrami sandwich at Katz’s before bouncing over to Lucali for pie.”
Over the past year and a half or so, each influencer has feverishly filmed and posted videos of their eating exploits across America. Around New York, where I live, the interest in these characters is as palpable as it is mystifying: with the possible exception of Straker, who at least knows his way around a mallard, none of them has any great talent, charisma, or wit. But their cross-state jaunts and rising popularity are more than a mere testament to how far a modicum of confidence and a punctuating ‘Yeah?’ can still take you on these shores.