Combine a moody chef angrily defying every health rule on the books, a cholesterol fest of cheese and fatty meats, and a disgusting eat-a-thon of greasy concoctions. What do you have? A YouTube hit series, of course. Bad boy chef Harley Morenstein hurls packages of bacon and ham into his supermarket cart, and slams around pots and pan to stir up a meal of his cheesiest, greasiest "Chili Four Loko" in one episode of Epic Meal Time ("Cakezilla" and "Ice Cream Pizza" are two other memorable meals). The Montreal filmmaker, along with pal Sterling Toth and crew, posts a new video on YouTube weekly.
Now they're shopping the program to TV networks. What accounts for the program's popularity? It can't be culinary ability. "No one has any chef skills," Morenstein tells the Daily Beast. "We like to keep it stupid." But the crew is super "passionate" about what it does, even though the show has been denounced by PETA as "nasty and gluttonous." And all the food "has tasted really, really good," says Toth. "Let's be realistic. You put bacon on anything, it'll taste good." (Speaking of bacon, click to read about bacon-flavored soda.)