Chef up for top video awards
Chef Kristin Atwood has been nominated for two international Webby awards for pasta-making videos she filmed in her Edinburgh flat.
Chef Kristin Atwood has been nominated for two international Webby awards for pasta-making videos she filmed in her Edinburgh flat.
The awards are handed out annually for excellence on the internet.
The 30-year-old founder of Chef Studio said: “I filmed the videos over the course of two weeks at the beginning of lockdown.
"I was at a fairly big, typically well stocked shop near my flat. There was no pasta and I thought, well, most people have some flour and probably a few eggs, I’ll do some video tutorials to show them how they can make pasta with ingredients they have at home”. Fast forward a year, and with nearly 72,000 subscribers to the Chef Studio Youtube channel and a few hundred thousands views, the Edinburgh-based Canadian received the nominations.
Others up for awards include Cardi B, Rihanna, Billie Eilish and Oprah Winfrey, with the winners to be announced at a virtual ceremony on May 18.
Atwood’s egg yolk and ricotta ravioli video is shortlisted in the Food & Drink: Video category and the basic pasta in the How To, Explainer & DIY: Video category.
Comments underneath the ravioli video include “That was mesmerising” and “Your videos are always magnificent, but this one brought a tear to my eye”.
Atwood said: “Somehow there’s this calmness to it; maybe it was the light that day. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to capture that feel again but I really love that video.”
She started out as a chef in top restaurants in Toronto, Montreal and Paris, as well as Edinburgh’s Quay Commons and The Lookout.
Before the pasta-making series she already had plenty of how-to videos on her 20-month-old channel. She said: “I usually do a lot of high-concept techniques, molecular gastronomy and modernist cuisine, but I didn’t feel like that sort of thing had a place in the first few months of the pandemic.
"I think people had time to try out recipes. They were looking for something to do and cooking gives you a feeling of accomplishmen.” But viewers may not have realised that they were shot on a budget in the bedroom of Atwood’s shared Fountainbridge flat.
“For filming, I split my bedroom into two sections, my bed was on one side and my makeshift kitchen studio on the other near the window,” she said. “I shot the series with equipment and ingredients I already had. These videos were about showing people they could use what they had and it didn’t have to be perfect”.
Over the past year, Atwood’s fan base has grown quickly. However, she had already garnered a few early accolades, including Youtube Creator on the Rise in February 2020 and a nomination for a James Beard Foundation Award last May. It was still something of a surprise to this selfdeprecating chef when she realised she’d made the Webby shortlist.
Atwood added: “When I first got the [nomination] email, I thought it was maybe a newsletter, then when I started reading I was flustered and it took me a while to process. I was really sweaty and I was like, why am I so sweaty? Stop sweating, you might have to accept an award in front of Rihanna, get it together.
"Now that I’m slightly less sweaty, I feel really grateful and superlucky. It does also feel a little funny because these videos filmed in my Fountainbridge bedroom are up against CNN, Tastemade and Vox.”