Let him cook: how Andy Cooks became the king of Foodtok

IT’S A RAINY MONDAY MORNING at a studio in Sydney and Andy Hearnden finds himself in the kind of situation that would make any home cook blanch with dread: trying to cook a stir-fry, cameras clicking away as he does so, without splashing oil on a stylish pair of Bottega Veneta trousers.

It’s a far cry from the uniform black t-shirts (and occasional chef’s jacket) that Hearnden, the affable Kiwi chef known universally online as Andy Cooks, is best known for wearing. In fact, this entire scenario would have been unimaginable to him just a couple of years ago, when the pandemic’s impact on the hospitality industry robbed him, and so many other exciting chefs, of a job.

But that was then, and this is now, and as we speak to him today, Hearnden enjoys the kind of influence on the food scene that most cooks can only dream of: over 13 million combined followers on YouTube, TikTok and Instagram, hundreds of millions of views, and a reputation as perhaps social media’s foremost authority on home cooking. All without the backing of a successful TV career or a stint at Bon Appetit. In fact, Hearnden himself claims he wasn’t even a particularly good home cook when he started making videos.

This isn’t to say Hearnden hasn’t always been drawn to food. Growing up in Auckland, the 37-year-old realised fairly early that an academic life wasn’t for him. A future in the kitchen was what he wanted. “I remember thinking, the sooner I can get out of school and into chef’s college, the better,” he says. In year 10, he dropped out of high school to enter catering college. “There’s never been any question in my mind what I was gonna do. It was always food. I think back now and realise I was really lucky that I’ve always had that direction in my life.”

Still young and eager to make the most of the city’s nightlife, Hearnden cut his teeth in a number of daytime jobs in cafe kitchens around Auckland. Eventually, the allure of more cosmopolitan postings grew too enticing. London, at the time in the midst of one of its culinary golden ages, would be the city to turn a fledgling cook into a bona fide chef.“ This was pre-GFC London, when it was one of the most exciting food cities in the world. England has an up-and-down reputation for food for some weird reason, but back then, it was world class.”

Hearnden’s first post was under the tutelage of Michelin-star chef Tom Aikens at Chelsea’s Tom’s Kitchen, before he made the move to Notting Hill institution E&O. By 24, he was leading a kitchen himself, heading up Shoreditch’s Great Eastern Dining Room. “I was way too young to have that job,” he reflects now. “I didn’t know how to manage people.”

As with so many other chefs, a crash course in the world of fine dining also brought stress and temptation in equal measure. “I worked hard and, like every chef, partied hard,” he says. The industry, brutal even now and utterly hedonistic during Hearnden’s rise through the ranks, left an increasing mark on his health as he progressed through London’s food scene and, via a brief stint as a consulting chef in Singapore, back to Australia. As his problems mounted, so too did his reputation—a quirk of data that seems to haunt chefs the world over. Landing in Sydney, he worked at French bistro Felix, and postings at Melbourne’s Gill’s Diner and Entrecôte followed.

Something had to give eventually, and seven years ago, it became too much. Hearnden, who was working in Melbourne at the time and struggling with substance abuse, entered rehab. He’s been sober ever since, and acutely aware that his story has a far happier ending than that of countless others. “Really sadly, there are a lot of people that don’t make it out the other end.”

That Hearnden did come back from the brink is down not just to his own clear industriousness, but his wife, Katelyn—known more widely to the pair’s millions of followers as ‘Babe’. The pair met in Melbourne the year before Andy entered rehab, and together embarked on a culinary odyssey as Andy made the move away from the day-in, day-out pressure cooker of the kitchen and into executive chef roles at St. Ali and Emirates.

Then the pandemic came along. Hearnden, like many other chefs and hospitality specialists, was made redundant—another casualty in an industry ripped apart as lockdowns took effect.

The pair relocated to the Sunshine Coast, where Hearnden soon realised that despite his prowess in professional kitchens, learning how to be a home cook again after almost 20 years was a tougher task than he expected. It was here in his kitchen with Katelyn that the seed of an idea formed. “It’s such an entirely different style of cooking, I basically had to re-learn how to cook,” he says. Why not, Hearnden thought, share what he learned with others along the way?

Hearnden’s initial posts largely followed the same format they do today: making authentic, accessible dishes with professional-grade cheats and hacks. Katelyn requests a dish, and Andy cooks it in his home kitchen, infusing his professional wisdom with the simple motions of home cooking. For the first year, Andy edited all the videos himself, posting the results mainly to TikTok, and then expanding to Instagram.

What resulted might go down as one of the most dramatic overnight success stories in the recent history of food social media.

“We had a million followers in three months,” Hearnden says, sounding still a little bemused. “Suddenly, I realised I was in a position of enormous influence. It’s a huge responsibility.” Hearnden exudes a warmth and respect for his craft that carries through to his videos on the very first watch, but even so, his sheer level of success remains a bit of a mystery at first glance.

@andy_cooks Singapore style noodles. Ingredients – 300g vermicelli rice noodles, soaked in boiling water for 5 mins – 3 spring onions, sliced into 2cm pieces – 1 carrot, cut into matchsticks – 1/4 head wombok, sliced thin – 4 cloves garlic, finely diced – 300g cold roast pork (chicken or ham) – 8 raw prawns (or shrimp), deveined and sliced in half – 2 eggs, beaten – 1 tsp curry powder – 2 tbsp soy sauce – 3 tbsp peanut oil Method Note – if you don't have a hot burner, remove the ingredients from the wok after each step and let it get back up to temp before moving on to the next step. Once you get to the step with the noodles, you can add everything back in and toss. 1. Heat the peanut oil in a wok or large frying pan over high heat. 2. Add the garlic and stir fry for 15 seconds. 3. Add the beaten egg and stir fry for another 30 seconds. 4. Add the sliced prawns and pork, and stir fry for another minute. 5. Add the spring onion, carrot, and wombok and stir fry for 2-3 minutes until the vegetables are slightly softened. 6. Add the drained noodles, curry powder and soy sauce, and stir fry until the noodles are heated through and coated in curry powder. 7. Serve hot and enjoy! ##cooking##recipe##noodles##fyp##viral##food ♬ Kung Fu Fighting – Carl Douglas

For more than a decade, the world’s most famous chefs have been trying to figure out ways to most effectively cut through to the home cook on social media, be it Gordon Ramsay yelling profanities at randoms on TikTok, or Jamie Oliver promising three-ingredient recipes that’ll have dinner on the table in 15 microseconds. Hearnden is far from the first professional chef to show people how to cook at home.

He might, however, be the most accessible—something he thinks is the key to his popularity, and that he picked up very quickly from other online cooking phenoms like Joshua Weissman and Andrew Rea (better known as Binging with Babish).

“I think there’s something in the authenticity of what we post. I try to show our content warts and all. If I make mistakes on a video, I’ll still post it. We acknowledge the people behind the camera. We try to keep a level of humility in everything.

“We also realise that with the influence comes a great deal of responsibility to respect the people and culture behind what we’re cooking. We’re not always perfect, but we’ll always do everything authentically to the absolute best of our ability.”

Whatever the secret sauce may contain, the fact is Hearnden is fully embarked on an entirely new career arc. With Katelyn managing the logistics full-time, the two have created a micro- empire of food content creation, with a schedule that would probably feel exhausting if you hadn’t spent the last two decades of your life as a chef. He now aims to film eight or nine shorts per week, alongside two-to-three long-form videos to go on his YouTube channel. He’s even branched out into new territory, creating a Bourdain-adjacent show where he travels to discover the origins of iconic foreign dishes.

“There’s a certain level of freedom involved,” he says when asked about the pressures life as a creator brings. “I’ve always worked hard and there’s less time off, but it’s more constant and manageable than the sudden, massive stress you’d get twice a day in a kitchen. I just have to be careful about burning out.”

Somehow, amongst all of this, Hearnden has found time to formulate a debut cookbook—something he says only really emerged as a possibility after repeated requests in his social comments. “I’m dyslexic, so writing doesn’t come naturally to me. I really couldn’t be more proud of it, and I’m so thankful to everyone who helped bring it to life. You don’t realise how many people end up being involved until you do it.”

The ethos behind Hearnden’s cookbook is simple, and really one that sums up the impact he’s had on millions of home cooks around the world. The Kiwi’s mission ultimately is to smash down barriers, whether they be those keeping people out of the kitchen or preventing people from coming together. “It’s about getting people breaking bread again. We all lead such busy lives. I just want to get people back to the table.”

Credits:
Photography: Oliver Begg
Styling: Patrick Zaczkiewicz
Grooming: Madison Voloshin

This story appears in the September issue of Esquire Australia, on newsstands August 31.