Chef and multimedia star Sohla El-Waylly will return to your YouTube playlists this week as the host of a brand new cooking show: Stump Sohla.
The restaurateur and internet favourite has partnered with Binging With Babish‘s Andrew Rea on the show, which will challenge El-Waylly to cook under extenuating circumstances.
Some of the challenges include ‘Serve on Fire’, making a meal ‘One-Handed’, and ‘Beat Babish’, which we can only assume means ‘absolutely flog one of YouTube’s other star chefs’.
A giant Wheel of Fortune-style spinner is involved, too. Huge.
The show’s first episode is slated to appear on Thursday, US time, meaning Aussie audiences may be able to catch it some time tomorrow.
Regular episodes will appear on Saturdays in the States. Your hungover viewing on Sunday is sorted, then.
Speaking to Deadline, Rea said it’s “thrilling” to have El-Waylly “join us as the first new addition to the BCU (Babish Culinary Universe).”
She had a cameo on Basics With Babish a few weeks back, if you’d like a a hint at what’s to come.
The show will mark El-Waylly’s most significant foray into YouTube’s culinary corner since her departure Bon Appétit magazine’s Test Kitchen channel.
In June, the emergence of a photo of Bon Appétit editor in chief Adam Rapoport wearing brownface sparked a reckoning on racism and pay equity at the publication.
When the photo resurfaced, El-Waylly, who is Bengali-American, said she was hired in an assistant editor role “to assist mostly white editors with significantly less experience than me.”
Despite becoming an integral part of the Test Kitchen channel and a solid fan favourite, El-Waylly said she was only “pushed in front of video as a display of diversity.”
“In reality, currently only white editors are paid for their video appearances,” she said.
She called on Rapoport to resign. He did. Other stars of the series vowed not to return to the show until pay equity was established, but contract negotiations collapsed; in August, El-Waylly, along with colleagues Priya Krishna and Rick Martinez, walked from the series.
“The contract I received was nowhere near equitable, and actually would potentially allow me to make even less than I do currently,” Krishna said at the time.
Bon Appétit’s parent company Condé Nast denied that staff were paid differently depending on their race or gender.
Stump Sohla presents an entirely new opportunity for the restaurateur, though, and I’m pretty pleased we’ll be watching the skills of Sohla El-Waylly again in the near future.
