The internet's most eccentric chef, Barfly7777, has cooked steak in a toilet and garlic shrimp in an airplane sink

"Let's be honest, I'm cooking in the shitter, right?" he said. "I'm trying to make a one-minute break from reality for people."

• The creator Barfly7777 has become famous (or infamous) for his unconventional cooking videos in bathrooms.
• He told BI that his job involves lots of traveling and that he's been doing this for years.
• He confirmed that nothing is staged and said he eats everything he prepares.

Barfly7777 might be the most resourceful and disquieting chef online.

His channel is like the cooking equivalent of cursed images, a meme format where two things are juxtaposed in an eerie way. The creator's fast-paced vlogs show him concocting full meals in hotel and airplane bathrooms.

What makes this shtick particularly unsettling is how he integrates parts of the space. He's dropped prime steak in the toilet tank of a hotel bathroom and propped pork belly on a ventilation unit.

Despite intentionally creating shocking content, Barfly7777 told BI he's "floored" by the range of appalled responses to his videos.

How the chaotic idea and channel was born

Barfly7777, who didn't want to reveal his name for privacy reasons, began making meals out of hotel bathrooms around 12 years ago, long before he started filming and uploading them to TikTok in 2021.

Barfly7777 told BI he spends around 180 to 200 days a year in a hotel due to work (he also did not want to disclose his full-time job). He said that eating out for every meal wasn't sustainable, so he started to cook using hotel room microwaves. But when that also became tiring, he explored more eccentric options.

His channel started taking off after December 2022, when he recorded himself making a "homemade hotel pizza" from scratch in the bathroom. At one point, he added yeast, honey, salt, and seasonings to "cover up the taste of bathroom," he wrote in an on-screen caption. He also urged viewers to check the water's pH before trying it for themselves.

The video amassed over 3.6 million views and was met with equal parts wonder and outrage in the comments. "Immune system gotta be in sports mode," one top comment joked.

Barfly7777 told BI that he was happily startled by the response, even if it was mostly disgust.

"It floored me, man," he said. "It's a bit of a rush; you get to read like tens of thousands of comments, people that are horrified, people that are like, 'Hey, that's cool,' but mostly horrified."

Barfly7777 confirmed he consumes all of his meals and that he's only angered one hotel

He told BI that some people have accused him of staging the videos with sets, but he confirmed he genuinely prepares his food this way while he's traveling and eats it. He described his suitcase as a treasure trove of "absolute shit," including all kinds of thrift shop finds to fashion cooking tools. Along with a good knife and sous vide machine, which controls water temperature, he'll bring any device that can provide heating, like rotisseries, hot plate coils, and charcoal electric starters.

One recurring response to his videos is concern for the cleaning staff, but Barfly7777 told BI that he's only gotten on the bad side of hotel staff once. He said he used to only bring hotplates instead of more extensive heating equipment, and a housekeeper saw it was left out and reported it to the front desk.

"Can I say I'm completely innocent of keeping it perfectly clean? No," he said. "But I'm not like some old 70s rockstar destroying walls and stuff like that."

In one of his most popular videos, to make chicken with mac and cheese and gravy, Barfly7777 seasoned the chicken on a hotel bathroom sink counter, cooked it in a heated baking tray, and then dried it with toilet paper. He boiled the pasta in the hotel sink with a trashed Tostitos bag, and then mixed the pasta with the sauce in the sink. Finally, he combined everything and ate it off a paper grocery bag.

In perhaps his most daring clip to date, Barfly7777 made garlic shrimp and mashed potatoes on a Delta flight last month. He titled the video, "Mile High Bathroom Garlic Shrimp & Mash."

The creator hooked up two 6-volt batteries to an immersion beverage heater in the airplane bathroom and cooked the shrimp in the sink.

Commenters were amazed and aghast. "Bro there is absolutely no way," one top comment said. "Imagine being the next person to use the bathroom," another viewer wrote.

'I'm trying to make a one-minute break from reality'

Barfly7777 told BI that he is going for "shock value" that's supposed to rile viewers up, but it's also deeper than that.

"Let's be honest, I'm cooking in the shitter, right?" he said. "I'm trying to make a one-minute break from reality for people."

He explained that a surprising amount of work goes into the short videos. While everything is shot on an iPhone, he adds zoom effects and stitches 40 to 50 separate clips into the minute of audiovisual chaos most viewers watch.

He said he thinks of his work as an art form and treats each video like a one-minute movie.

"It gave me a new way to cook, but it was also something kind of fun to do — something kind of innovative to screw around with," Barfly7777 said. "When I'm on the road, well, I got nothing to do after work. I'm just in a hotel by myself. So it was like a creative outlet, too."