Continuing my series of YouTuber Reviews, this is a review of Jun Yoshizuki who hosts JunsKitchen as well as his own titular channel and is one half of the husband & wife duo channel Rachel and Jun. He has all these channels and I like them all, but I want to focus on JunsKitchen and the Jun Yoshizuki channel because what I really like about Jun is his cooking videos and that’s where most of them are located.
Rachel and Jun is a good channel too, for sure, but what differentiates Jun’s cooking channel is that Rachel and Jun is a sort of typical “what it’s like to live in Japan channel” and Jun’s cooking shows are just the best cooking shows on the internet starring “that cool guy from the Rachel and Jun channel”. At some point on Rachel and Jun, I don’t remember which video, they get asked what they used to do for jobs and they said Jun “used to work in a kitchen” or something to that effect. Nuh-uh dude, that is clearly a grossly humble understatement unless that kitchen was the Iron Chef kitchen.
JunsKitchen features the most beautiful cooking videos I’ve ever seen. Not only are the dishes he makes well-curated and interesting, just like you’d expect from a Japanese person who speaks fluent English and has a lot of Western exposure — a sort of 70/30 East meets West blend — but Jun’s presence as a host and video editing skills transform what could have been just another blah Food Network style half-hour into something that’s truly a work of art. Plus, he makes Japanese cooking seem accessible in a way that appeals to American sensibility without compromising its integrity.
Each of these videos combines an intense feeling of calm and zen-like beauty with cataclysmic food porn. Everything seems so extraordinarily polished, from the precise knifework to the cleanliness of the kitchen to the execution of the cooking; it all seems like an orchestrated dance performed with a great deal of care. Best of all, even though what he makes is complex and difficult, he makes it look easy: the sign of a true expert.
JunsKitchen is the channel where he posts the more polished, highly produced cooking videos, but Jun Yoshizuki has his own casual cooking channel which is certainly no slouch either. It sort of splits the difference between JunsKitchen and Rachel & Jun and brings the lifestyle vlogging hosting duo dynamic to the cooking and showcases things that are maybe a little more accessible to make on a day to day basis.
You may not know this about me, but I grew up watching cooking shows, so I know what I’m talking about. JunsKitchen is like Ming Tsai on steroids. Food Network wishes they could produce the content Jun Yoshizuki is putting out on YouTube. Seriously just watch this dude make a Crepe Suzette and tell me it doesn’t make you swoon.
That about covers it for my review of Jun Yoshizuki and his channels JunsKitchen, the Jun Yoshizuki Channel and Rachel and Jun. Be sure to check out my YouTuber Reviews section for more uh… YouTuber reviews. That was a pretty bad sentence.
