John Armand Mitzewich, more commonly known as "Chef John", is an American

chef A chef is a professional Cook (profession), cook and tradesperson who is proficient in all aspects of outline of food preparation, food preparation, often focusing on a particular cuisine. The word "chef" is derived from the term (), the di ...

known for publishing instructional cooking videos on the blog and

YouTube YouTube is an American social media and online video sharing platform owned by Google. YouTube was founded on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim who were three former employees of PayPal. Headquartered in ...

channel ''Food Wishes'', with over 1 billion views on his channel.

Early life and education

John Armand Mitzewich{{Cite web, url=https://twitter.com/foodwishes/status/934215380599312384, date=24 November 2017, accessdate=24 November 2017, title=Middle name Tweet graduated from

Paul Smith's College Paul Smith's College is a private college in the hamlet/village of Paul Smiths, in the town of Brighton, Franklin County, New York, in the Adirondack Mountains. Established in 1946, Paul Smith's College offers academic degrees of Associate ...

, New York, in 1983. He received an Associate of Applied Science Degree, with Honors, in Culinary Arts/Chef Training, and was also honored as the school's 1983 "Outstanding Chef Training Student".{{cite web, url=http://americanfood.about.com/bio/John-Mitzewich-36296.htm, title=John Mitzewich, publisher=, accessdate=23 January 2017, archive-date=15 June 2009, archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090615073046/http://americanfood.about.com/bio/John-Mitzewich-36296.htm, url-status=dead

Career

Mitzewich has held various positions in the restaurant industry, including executive sous-chef at the Carnelian Room, sous-chef at Ryan's Café, and garde-manger at the San Francisco Opera. Mitzewich was an instructor at the

California Culinary Academy The California Culinary Academy (CCA) was a for-profit school, and an affiliate of Le Cordon Bleu located in San Francisco, California. Danielle Carlisle established the school in 1977 to train chefs using the European education model. The origi ...

San Francisco San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is a commercial, Financial District, San Francisco, financial, and Culture of San Francisco, cultural center of Northern California. With a population of 827,526 residents as of ...

for five years before he left to focus on online teaching. He has had a partnership with the online food network

Allrecipes.com Allrecipes.com, Inc. is a food-focused online social networking service headquartered in Seattle, Washington. The company was founded by University of Washington archaeology students Tim Hunt, Carl Lipo, Mark Madsen, Michael Pfeffer, David Quinn ...

since 2010, and has published a cookbook for Paragon Publishing, ''America's Family Favorites: The Best of Home Cooking''.{{Cite web, url=http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/01/13/MN3S1H3GJS.DTL, publisher= SFGate, date=13 January 2011, author=Stacy Fins, accessdate=2 March 2011, title=YouTube viewers turn chefs into unlikely stars{{cite news, url=https://www.sfgate.com/food/article/chef-john-food-wishes-interview-17486615.php, title=Why this viral Bay Area chef doesn't show his face in videos, work= SFGate, date=October 7, 2022, first=Madeline, last=Wells, access-date=July 3, 2025 In 2011, he was awarded Best Home Chef in a Series by Taste TV.

YouTube

Mitzewich began his Youtube channel, Food Wishes, in 2007. Each of his recipes is split between his blog and the video instructions on his YouTube channel; ingredient amounts and background information about the recipe are only available on the blog, and the method is only available on YouTube. He has noted that this allows him to get "paid twice" from the advertising on both sites. Mitzewich deliberately keeps himself out of the shot on his YouTube videos, only displaying utensils, ingredients and his hands. He records the narration after the rest of the video is finished. His narrations are always done in a wandering and almost singsong tone of voice, a result of the editing process, in which he records each statement (consisting of a few words) several times and splices together the best takes. He includes one rhyming wordplay joke per video, usually of the form "You are, after all, the ''X'' of ''Y'' ", in which ''X'' and ''Y'' rhyme, ''X'' is a job title or the name of a celebrity, and ''Y'' is something relevant to the video. An example: "You are, after all, the

Jim Kelly James Edward Kelly (born February 14, 1960) is an American former professional football quarterback who played in the National Football League (NFL) for 11 seasons with the Buffalo Bills. He also spent two seasons with the Houston Gamblers o ...

of what goes in your belly!" Mitzewich includes powdered

cayenne pepper The cayenne pepper is a type of ''Capsicum annuum''. It is usually a hot chili pepper used to flavor dishes. Cayenne peppers are a group of tapering, 10 to 25 cm long, generally skinny, mostly red-colored peppers, often with a curved ti ...

in almost every recipe. He describes it as giving an "extra touch of the heat and bringing the unique tastes of the dishes forward".{{citation needed, date=July 2021 As of June 2025, Mitzewich has over 4.61 million subscribers to his YouTube channel with over 1.1 billion views. Mitzewich has a content partnership deal with YouTube.

Podcast

From May 2021 until December 2022, Mitzewich and Andrew Scrivani presented 33 episodes of the "Chef John Podcast". Each episode was hosted by Mitzewich and lasted from 15 to 35 minutes, during which he and Scrivani lightheartedly discussed recipes and created "top five" lists on food-related topics.

Personal life

In 2019, Mitzewich and his wife moved to

Sebastopol, California Sebastopol ( ) is a city in Sonoma County, California, with a recorded population of 7,521, per the 2020 United States census, 2020 U.S. Census. Sebastopol was once primarily a plum- and apple-growing region. Wine grapes are the predominant a ...

, where the two purchased a home. Mitzewich has used the community tab on his YouTube channel to provide updates on the home's renovation.{{cite web, url=https://foodwishes.blogspot.com/2019/11/the-story-of-kismet-and-other-major.html, first=John, last=Mitzewich, title=The Story of Kismet and Other Major Breaking News, date=November 4, 2019, access-date=25 March 2024

References