Nick DiGiovanni Reveals The Fast Food Career He Almost Had

Nick DiGiovanni’s ascent through the food world has been remarkably quick. He went from Harvard grad to MasterChef competitor and Gordon Ramsay protégé before building a massive YouTube following, launching products, hosting TV shows and, most recently, creating his own line of meals with Home Chef.

At this point, wherever food exists online or IRL, there’s a decent chance you’ll find DiGiovanni’s infectious enthusiasm somewhere nearby, perfect for ages 2 to 200. Truly, the man’s consistency will win you over.

We’ve watched food creators make the jump from our screens into pantries, fridges and cabinets on a national scale. There’s still something exciting about the fact that someone can start making food in their home kitchen and eventually see those ideas become products people across the country can actually eat. The playing field has never felt more open.

We caught up with DiGiovanni ahead of the launch of his Home Chef collaboration to talk about turning recipes from his videos and cookbook into meals for home cooks. Somewhere along the way, we also learned that he nearly went corporate at McDonald’s straight out of college, travels internationally with a remarkably tiny production crew and has strong opinions about lobster rolls, New England pizza and one spectacularly bad luxury pie.

Foodbeast: What’s the most expensive food you’ve ever eaten that was also the most disgusting

Nick DiGiovanni: Probably this pizza I had that was supposed to be really fancy. The dough and crust were black, and then there were lots of really strong cheeses on it. Instead of mozzarella, it was blue cheese, Gorgonzola and all these very sharp, smelly, strong cheeses.

They tried to put some gold and caviar on it, and it was very, very not good. I brought one of my friends who really likes pizza, and he didn’t even eat a single slice. I don’t think I’ll ever go back for another pizza.

Foodbeast: What sparked your interest in starting Osmo, your line of salts and seasonings?

Nick DiGiovanni: It’s actually really similar to the reason I’m doing this partnership with Home Chef. I made so many videos where I make all this food, and nobody watching ever gets to try any of it besides me and maybe my camera guy.

That eventually made me decide to start Osmo, where I could make my own seasonings and let people watching the videos experience something they might have seen and bring them into my kitchen a little bit.

Part of what made me want to work with Home Chef was seeing how well it went for Gordon when he partnered with them. Gordon takes his food more seriously than really anybody out there, so if he trusted the Home Chef team to do his meals justice, I felt like I could trust the team as well.

Foodbeast: How long have you been working on the Home Chef partnership and recipes? How much back and forth was there with taste testing, test kitchens and narrowing down the dishes you picked?

Nick DiGiovanni: It was really organic because all these recipes are inspired by ones from either my channel or my cookbook. They were already right there in front of me, which was nice because we didn’t have to do as much legwork. We’d already done a lot of the recipe testing, thinking and creativity.

We pulled from a big catalog of things we loved, and the Home Chef team and I made our own creative twists on the recipes. We also had to make them more approachable for the home cook because the whole idea was that these meals should be easy to make and doable regardless of skill level.

Foodbeast: We watched your series where you tried some of the most expensive restaurants and foods around the world. How long did it take to execute all those videos?

Nick DiGiovanni: I believe we did 13 shoots in 12 days, and it’s surprisingly common for us to do that much travel in that amount of time. We’ll go to a country on a tight timeline, stay just long enough to film, hop on a flight that evening, arrive somewhere really late, go to bed and do the same thing the next day.

I did a recent video with 16 sections, all filmed in different places across a lot of different countries. There’s a lot of logistical planning with the videos now.

Foodbeast: How big is your production crew?

Nick DiGiovanni: It’s just me and one person. I do a lot of the filming with my camera guy.

I remember being at a fish market in Japan at four in the morning. We were told that a Netflix crew had shown up a week or two before with all these giant cameras, and they were shut out because this fish market is so secretive and private. Then they let us go in and film a full video.

The fact that you can stay so lean and still make high-impact videos with amazing reach is one of the really cool things about YouTube. Most of the travel videos on my channel were filmed with just me and one camera guy.

Foodbeast: When you’re going country to country and jumping between time zones, how do you keep an appetite for all those rich, heavy meals? And who eats everything when you obviously can’t finish all that food?

Nick DiGiovanni: I’ve gotten really good at adjusting to time changes. I have a couple basic rules I live by. I won’t think about what time it is back home once I land somewhere new. I’ll set my clock to the local time on the plane, get sunlight if it’s daytime and stay away from the hotel bed until it’s actually time to sleep.

Then I eat meals on a normal schedule. If you’re not hungry for lunch or dinner, eat it anyway. Even if everything feels backwards, eat on the proper meal schedule.

There are so many high-performance athletes who have a more difficult job to stay focused on. If you’re an F1 driver going from race to race, you’re trying not to crash your car. So for me, if I have to sit and eat some chili crab in Singapore, I should be able to suck it up and figure it out, you know?

In terms of all the food, we share it whenever we can. Right now, my team is packing up 250 pounds of hot peppers from a video where we tried all the spiciest peppers in the world. We’re giving them to a bunch of restaurants tonight.

We’re really good about giving food away when we’re in Boston. The only time I’m generally throwing things away is if I feel like they’re not food safe.

Foodbeast: What’s a food from New England that more people nationally should know about?

Nick DiGiovanni: I grew up in Rhode Island, so I still consider myself a Rhode Islander at heart. One of the best things there is this frozen lemonade called Del’s Lemonade that everyone grows up having.

It’s the best summer drink. It has chunks of lemon in there, which takes it over the top. You could just grind up lemon juice and sugar, but this has chunks of lemon zest in there that take it to the next level.

Foodbeast: A lot of people talk about Connecticut pizza. Let’s settle the debate: Who really has the best pizza in New England? And who has the best lobster rolls?

Nick DiGiovanni: I’m a fan of the cold lobster roll with mayonnaise. Some people like the hot ones with butter, but that classic Maine lobster roll with cold mayo is hard to beat.

I make some small changes that hopefully appease both the hot lobster roll lovers and the cold ones. I make the bun really toasted, buttery and hot. I love that contrast between the hot, buttery bun and really cold, mayonnaise-coated lobster. That’s the sweet spot. But if I had to choose one, I’m choosing cold. I’m going with the classic.

With pizza, I’ve definitely thought a lot about it, and I know people get very passionate about this topic.

A really fair way to say it is that New York has a better average slice of pizza. They’ve got so many shops, and they’re just at the top of their game.

I think you could argue that Connecticut has the best individual slices. Interestingly, the best pizza I’ve had, even outside New England, is probably in Japan. It’s called Pizza Bar on 38, and it’s a very small eight-seat pizza counter. You sit down and get to try a bunch of slices, and that’s the best pizza in the world, in my opinion.

Foodbeast: If you’re going to New York or Connecticut and can only go to one place for a pie or slice, where are you going?

Nick DiGiovanni: I’m probably going to Connecticut, partly because it’s closer to Boston and Rhode Island, but picking a spot there is hard.

I’m not a fan of the clam pie. I like clams, but for pizza, I like classic. Everyone always argues between Frank Pepe’s and Sally’s Apizza, and then Modern, too. I don’t know if I can pick a favorite.

Funny enough, Frank Pepe’s is the one with the super-famous white clam pizza, and I prefer a red sauce pie. I don’t know that I can pick between Pepe’s and Sally’s. I’d be happy with a really good hot pizza from either place, as long as it wasn’t the clam one.

Foodbeast: If somebody gifted you one location of any food franchise—fast food, fast casual, whatever you want—which would you own?

Nick DiGiovanni: A little-known fact: I almost worked full-time at McDonald’s out of college. I was going to be an Operations Associate.

I looked at it as this starting position that could lead toward being almost like a Michelin critic, where you go to different restaurants undercover and check everything out. You order a bunch of items, make sure everything’s hot and make sure it comes looking nice. I was so excited about that.

So because of that, it would probably be a McDonald’s. I know that’s a classic answer, but I almost worked there full-time. I loved everyone there and the team, and I feel like it would be a lot of fun. I’m a big fan of their fries. They’ve perfected the French fry.

It was a totally different path, but that job was fully set up. I remember going to Chicago for the final interview, and I was almost going to work there right out of college.