Matt Broussard doesn’t know how to describe his food. The chef’s forthcoming cookbook, Now We’re Cooking, has everything from his grandma’s dolmades—grape leaves stuffed with lamb and rice cooked in duck fat—to cantaloupe gazpacho and seared tuna steaks coated in fennel furikake.

It’s a culinary hodgepodge that defies categorization, but Broussard defies categorization himself. “I don’t really fit into a box,” he says.

The descriptor he settled on as a subtitle for Now We’re Cooking (S&S/Simon Element) is “laid-back,” a phrase that aptly sums up Broussard’s presence. Surfer-handsome, sporting the array of tattoos you’d expect from a career restaurant chef, he’s built a massive social media following from how easy he makes everything look. Whether he’s sautéing zucchini on YouTube (where he has 1.74 million followers), pickling asparagus on TikTok (where he has 4.7 million), or pressing out fresh tortillas on Instagram (727,000), he moves with an enviable effortlessness.

Yes, Chef. Through his online presence, which features videos of him cooking, chopping, pickling, and obviously enjoying the kitchen, Matt Broussard has amassed millions of followers.

PHOTOGRAPHS BY OLLI TUMELIUS

Watching him, you think, that looks cool. And then, if you listen to the explanations of why he’s doing what he’s doing—why Idaho russet potatoes are best for fries, why good butchers put paper, not plastic, around meat—it’s likely that you’ll think, maybe I could do that. Some of the recipes might seem daunting for novices, like the thin-sliced Hassleback potatoes that cook in a skillet on top of a roasting chicken, but Broussard insists that there’s nothing stopping a random social media fan from pulling off anything that he cooks. “Anyone could watch one of the videos and just get inspired to make something,” he says.

Broussard’s coworkers didn’t understand why he sometimes filmed during shifts. “They always gave me shit for doing social,” he says. He knew things were changing when one of them asked him what a hashtag was.

Broussard was raised in Brownsville, a Rio Grande Valley border town on the very southern tip of Texas; his mother’s first language was Spanish, but he was taught to cook mostly by his Syrian grandmother, who was born in Chile and raised in San Diego. Broussard started working in restaurants at 16 and went to culinary school in Austin before a stint cooking at the touristy paradise of South Padre Island. Inspired by what he heard about celebrated chef Tom Douglas, Broussard uprooted himself to Seattle with a one-way ticket, $500 in his pocket, and a letter of recommendation from a Texas state senator he knew that he hoped would land him a job at Douglas’ famed Palace Kitchen in Belltown. After a grueling Friday-night tryout shift—he still has a faded burn scar from manning the grill—he got the gig.

During his years at Douglas’ restaurants as a roving tournant—industry lingo for a jack-of-all-trades—Broussard started shooting video as a hobby, sometimes instructional pieces, sometimes clips of his days at work. This was the first half of the 2010s, and social media hadn’t taken off yet, at least not in kitchens. Broussard’s coworkers didn’t understand why he sometimes filmed during shifts. “They always gave me shit for doing social,” he says. He knew things were changing when one of them asked him what a hashtag was.

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, Broussard, along with nearly everyone else in the restaurant industry, lost his job. While quarantining at home, he switched to creating videos full time. To post on TikTok, he flipped his camera to record vertically—then a relative novelty—and filmed himself chopping something, he can’t remember what exactly, maybe onions. “That took off,” he says. “It got like a million views in 10 minutes.” The massive ASMR community, always on the hunt for soothing sounds, had found him. Soon he was chopping other things by request: candy bars, watermelons. A TikTok of him chopping chicken nuggets earned 24.4 million views, still the most for anything he’s done on that platform.

That first viral spike might be partly attributable to luck, or TikTok’s algorithm, but Broussard’s years of experience shooting video of himself prepared him for social media stardom. Since then, he’s filmed recipe videos, vlogs about his life, tours of his collections of knives and Pokémon cards, and Seattle dining recommendations. There have been stretches, he says, when he was making five videos a day.

More recently, Broussard has pared that pace back—“I think I might have gotten burnout,” he admits—but has stayed busy. He still makes videos for his multiple channels, is finishing up his book, and is in the process of opening a restaurant with Conscious Hospitality Group. Called Char the Chicken, it’ll be serving roast chicken and Mexican-inspired sides in the former Mt. Joy restaurant on Capitol Hill. Broussard is designing the menu, training the staff, and (obviously) promoting it on social media. As of press time, the plan is for it to open by the start of this summer’s FIFA World Cup.

Food for thought. Broussard’s first cookbook is slated for release on August 11.

PHOTOGRAPH BY OLLI TUMELIUS

It’s easy to attribute his success, at least partially, to his charm. When talking to the camera, Broussard is friendly, approachable, and yes, laid-back. But when he stops speaking and the camera focuses on what he’s doing with his hands, a sense of drama descends. There’s rarely any sound but the soft scrape of his knife touching the cutting board, and Broussard has an eye for color and shot composition. A simple culinary task like chopping chives becomes almost surreal when filmed in close-up: a mottled knife descending through a bright-green forest of tubes. You can learn about preparing food from Broussard’s videos, but the thing that likely draws you in is the strange magnetism of watching him cook.

Now We’re Cooking comes out August 11.