Artist Profile: Nick DiGiovanni ’19 on the Art of Culinary Content Creation

Nick C. DiGiovanni ’19 is one of Boston’s great foodies. His studio is littered with giant-sized food plushies, a “Ratatouille” poster, a shelf with Streamy Awards For Food Creator of the Year resembling mini-Oscars, and a silver-lit neon sign that reads “ANYONE CAN COOK.”

With over 31 million followers across his social media accounts, as of April, DiGiovanni is a prolific content creator known for his imaginative food hacks and hotshot celebrity collaborations. Few Harvard alumni get to boast about cooking burgers for Mr. Beast, rating pink Starbursts with Paris Hilton, or breaking the Guinness World Record for the world’s largest beef Wellington with Gordon Ramsay.

DiGiovanni reflected on how most of his earliest childhood memories involved food.

“I’ve been looking at [my] baby pictures lately,” he said. “I’ve got spatulas, and I’m in the cupboard searching for stuff. I’m making birthday cakes for my brother when I can barely start walking.”

DiGiovanni cites his main cooking inspirations as his family members: “Whenever anyone asked me — if you could meet one person who's dead or alive, who would it be? — I’d probably go and pick some great-grandparent who I never got to meet who was also really into cooking.” “Then if I could, I’d bring back all those different family members and have a big showdown one day. That’d be fun. I bet we’d all cook in different ways,” DiGiovanni said.

As a first-year at Harvard College, DiGiovanni recalled enrolling in the popular Gen Ed 1104: “Science and Cooking: From Haute Cuisine to Soft Matter Science.”

“I got to sit, just me and Massimo Bottura, who is the number one chef in the world,” DiGiovanni said. “And actually, I still have the bottle of San Pellegrino that [Bottura] half-finished. I just kept it as a souvenir.”

The Science and Cooking course inspired DiGiovanni to pitch and design Harvard’s first food-related special concentration called “Food and Climate,” as he explored the ways to combat environmental issues with food.

“I was excited about trying to do something on my own,” DiGiovanni said.

Though he got rejected the first time he applied for the concentration, with enough grit and professor support, the application succeeded the second time. “I don’t know what I would have picked if it didn’t work out.”

While juggling his studies, DiGiovanni landed a part-time job at Waypoint, a coastal-inspired seafood restaurant right by his dorm in Cambridge and accepted a summer internship under Chef Corey Lee at Benu, a Michelin 3-star restaurant in San Francisco.

In his senior year, DiGiovanni took a break from school to compete on the cooking competition MasterChef season 10, where he ended up as the youngest-ever finalist, according to Variety.

Nick DiGiovanni '19 in his studio. By Courtesy of Woojin Lim

When asked why he ended up staying in the Boston area post-graduation — unlike many other content creators who tend to be centralized in LA, New York, or Miami — DiGiovanni cited his upbringing in Barrington, Rhode Island: “I’m a New England guy just through and through.”

Of his most recent travels, DiGiovanni fondly recounted his trip to Japan, a trip on which he traveled all over the country shooting videos for his YouTube channel. DiGiovanni’s highlight of the trip was discreetly filming in one of the world’s biggest fish markets in Tokyo.

Beyond being a full-time content creator, DiGiovanni boasts entrepreneurial ambitions. He founded the company, Happy Potato — a clothing brand that donates a portion of its proceeds to the non-profit The Farmlink Project, an organization that provides meals to families in need. Another one of his companies, Osmo Salt, sells premium seasoning for home-cooked meals.

To make his recipes accessible to the public, DiGiovanni published his debut cookbook, “Knife Drop: Creative Recipes Anyone Can Cook,” that features staple recipes such as homemade butter and lobster rolls. The book became a New York Times bestseller.

One of the most difficult parts of creating this book was photographing each dish. As for one recipe that he had to reshoot four times in the warehouse, “I never want to think about this blueberry Brie grilled cheese ever again,” DiGiovanni said.

Speaking of a close content collaborator Lynja, who passed away in January, DiGiovanni said, “I can go and sit for days and watch a bunch of videos that I made with her. Her family and her kids can all watch that stuff.”

Above all, making memories is what drives DiGiovanni in his work.

“I just really liked being around food, and I liked to cook. I took all those opportunities that came up out of nowhere. I’ve had this really fun journey and it’s led me here,” Digiovanni said.

—Staff writer Woojin Lim can be reached at woojin.lim@thecrimson.com.