Pan masala omelette to idli ice cream, food influencers cook up crazy dishes to go viral

Remember the scene from the 1925 classic ‘The Gold Rush’ where Charlie Chaplin is seen boiling a leather shoe and eating it out of sheer hunger, laces and all? That was a satirical scene about what desperation can drive you to. However, the only thing food vloggers are desperate for these days is views and likes. It’s this that has spawned a whole genre of cooked up dishes that would make even Chaplin’s boiled leather shoe pale.

Talking of clickbait (or shall we call it clickplate?), the weird combos served up in 2024 included chocolate tikka and biryani, idli popsicles, Oreo pakodas and much more. “The more viral our video, the more money we make. One lakh views yield one dollar. So, we must keep improvising,” says Sandeep Kumar, a 26-year-old food vlogger in Delhi who left his retail salesman job in 2020 to launch a street food YouTube channel.