When Four Perfect Ingredients Combine – Mark Wiens – YouTube Channels For Foodies
Food Content That Speaks – Tavakkul – YouTube Channels For Foodies
12 September 2022
If you absolutely adore food, you quite simply need Mark Wiens in your digital life.
There surely aren’t many of Mark’s videos that we’ve not watched here at Contentico, even back to his very first video some thirteen years ago. So familiar are we with his mannerisms and parlance that we’ve developed a strange sort of sixth-sense feeling when watching his content. This strange feeling, yet to be medically diagnosed I must add, only seems to arise when Mark is not 100% authentically happy with the place/restaurant he’s eating in and talking about. Simply put, if Mark isn’t happy then nor are we. Luckily, he’s a genius location selector, and thus almost always finds himself in locations and establishments with outstanding food and delightful people.
Mark is all about authenticity and passion, he does it better than any other incumbent foodie YouTube creator that we know of. There are also many other layers to his channel, such as the feeling that we’ve watched his young son grow up during fleeting screen appearances, as well as observing his wife clearly playing an integral role behind the scenes during much of the filming.
When he is onscreen, it’s almost unfair for other creators – the man can tuck into even the most basic of dishes, but the way he describes the tastes and textures makes you feel truly in the moment with him, each and every time. Added to all his passionate food genius, he’s also clearly one very lovely human being to boot. Always impeccably polite, gracious, and diplomatic to a tee. In another life, he’d have made one heck of a diplomat or ambassador. However, in that parallel universe, the world would indeed be more peaceful but, we’d have a markedly worse digital food culture.
With everything written above, it’s palpably obvious that any Wiens content is exceptionally interesting to us. It‘s because of this fact, that when he uploads content that even exceeds his usual impeccable standard, we feel the need to immediately dissect to work out why. Such a need for dissection happened after watching his latest video at EL Capricho restaurant, León, Spain. Once this video in question is clicked, you are transported into a world of pure and simple gastronomic heaven. This piece isn’t about describing the video verbatim, Mark does that better than we ever could. Our intention here is to look briefly at why, in our opinion, this one video simply goes to another level.
This brings us nicely to the four perfect ingredients. The first is obviously the man himself, Mr. Mark Wiens (on the far right of the picture), no further introduction is required there. The second is Jeffrey Merrihue, the one seated in the middle. Jeffrey is a man as passionate about food as Mark, this is no mean feat. He clearly played a large part in organising this visit, becoming a kind of location agent/producer for this trip which helped bring the ingredients together. Jeffrey, however, does much more than help organise, he seems to innately know the ideal locations (globally) where Mark will most enjoy, whilst all the while during these visits the two engage in the most natural of ways. Jeffrey has even adopted some ‘Wiensian’ phrases such as ‘rehydrate’ and ‘pro-move’ which shows his social media flexibility. The two are clearly bonded over their passion for food, their interactions are a joy to watch. I often find myself wanting to be squished between the two of them, eating what they’re eating. The third ingredient is Kevin Chan (on left). Kevin is a mega-serious foodie – his food descriptors are always on point. He was the first person to visit and eat at the ‘World’s 50 Best’ restaurants, so his palate has some serious pedigree. His energy and razor-sharp observations are a brilliant addition to this and other videos that have been filmed in Mark’s Spanish series.
This video sees these three perfect ingredients majestically transported in a Terry Gilliam ‘Time Bandits’ meets Andrew Zimmern style, to the oxen fields, and then the restaurant of the fourth perfect ingredient, José Gordon. José is the acclaimed Spanish chef, oxen farmer, and proprietor of EL Capricho – he is very clearly an absolute master of his multiple crafts. Having worked as a steak chef when he was younger, he promised himself that one day he’d run an establishment where every cut of meat would be as perfect as humanly possible. Boy, has he done just that. José has created meat heaven, where the love for his prize herd of oxen is as intensely passionate as his love for the finished product itself. Truly authentic, organic, supreme quality, farm-to-table food is a rarity indeed. EL Capricho brings all these elements together to create a must-visit restaurant for any true foodie on the planet.
Four perfect ingredients: Wiens, Merrihue, Chan, and Gordon show that when you bring truly authentic content creators, facilitators, foodies, chefs, products, and locations together, this is when digital content magic happens.
Mark Wiens’ video featuring EL Capricho et al:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FERg3aS8Y48
EL Capricho restaurant
Jeffrey Merrihue
Kevin Chan
The World’s 50 Best
Andrew Zimmern
