[Photos: Shutterstock; Photoshop: Raphael Brion/Eater]
2013 was a pretty good year for food videos (compare to say, 2010, 2011, or 2012). There was a dumpster-thieving bear, Alton Brown at a strip club, gross tortillas in space, Chipotle's lecturing, Paula Deen's spectacular YouTube meltdown, Amy's Baking Company on Kitchen Nightmares, chickens getting decapitated in front of a bloodthirsty crowd of food nerds at MAD, restaurants dressing up as other restaurants for Halloween, epic rants about pizza, crazy Japanese robot restaurants, and tons and tons of food porn. Here now, the best food videos of 2013 in order. Anything missing? Then jump into the comments and say so:
25) Cocktail Porn at ZZ's Clam Bar
Here's a video from Eater NY showcasing the work of bartender Thomas Waugh at the NYC hotspot ZZ's Clam Bar.
24) Bear Steals an Entire Restaurant Dumpster
An enterprising bear in Colorado Springs, Colorado went dumpster-diving and pushed a restaurant's garbage bin a full 50 feet out into the parking lot to get better access to the previous night's scraps.
23) Mathematical Ramen Porn
Here's an awesome video documenting the most important components that make up the ramen at Austin's wildly popular Ramen Tatsu-Ya. The "culinary equation" that yields the ramen is the broth + the noodles + toppings, divided by the slurp.
22) Bourdain Visits Tokyo's Insane Robot Restaurant
On the Tokyo episode of Parts Unknown, Anthony Bourdain filmed the Robot Wars show at Robot Restaurant in Tokyo's Shinjuku Kabukicho district. Yes, that Robot Restaurant.
21) Breaking Bad's Awkward Guacamole
Table-side guacamole had a starring role in an extremely tense scene in an episode of Breaking Bad.
20) An Epic Preview at the elBulli Foundation
Here's an epic 19-minute tour through Ferran Adrià's elBulliFoundation. Set to intensely jazzy music, the video goes through both renderings and completed spaces to give you an idea of what the Foundation will look like when it opens sometime in 2015.
19) Gusto, the Food TV Network That Could Have Been
Here's a six-minute promo reel from 2005 for the Gusto television network, a food-oriented television channel financed by Viacom and Comcast that never got off the ground.
18) Chefs Read Their Restaurants' Yelp Reviews
Shot by Eater at the Aspen Food & Wine Classic: Real chefs reading real (bad) Yelp reviews of their restaurants. Including: Andrew Zimmern, Jamie Malone, John Besh, John Tesar, and more.
17) Stefon's Epic Send-Off on Saturday Night Live
Weekend Update's city correspondent and tweaked-out club kid Stefon (played by Bill Hader) had a big send-off with real-life recreations of all the club craziness.
16) Chipotle's The Scarecrow & Funny or Die's Parody
Back in September Chipotle released a short film called The Scarecrow, a hardcore condemnation of industrial animal farming. Shortly thereafter Funny or Die released a biting parody with new lyrics like "Come with us and you'll be in a world of pure imagination/ With an ad made for you by a giant corporation."
15) Stephen Colbert Makes it Rain Endive
After mentioning endives in a segment, the president of the California Endive Farms sent Colbert "a generous attempt at payola" in the form of a letter complimenting his pronunciation and a box of endives. Shouts Colbert: "Free endive motherf*ckers! Time to make it rain!"
14) Bourdain and Alton Brown at the Clermont Lounge
On the Atlanta episode of The Layover, Anthony Bourdain took Alton Brown to the legendary Clermont Lounge,the strip club known for its shots in tiny plastic cups and dancers with fuller-than-usual figures.
13) Molecular Mixology on Parks and Recreation
The whole molecular cocktail thing hits Eagleton when the Parks and Recreation crew visits a new bar in town called Essence.
12) Food in Space
Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield showed off his "kitchen" in the International Space Station. But really he just made a weird peanut butter and honey tortilla sandwich.
11) Portlandia's Check-Splitting Fixer
Here's actor Robert Blanche on Portlandia playing a professional check-splitting fixer inspired by the Harvey Keitel/Winston Wolfe "cleaner" character from Pulp Fiction.
10) Roy Choi's MAD Talk
At René Redzepi's MAD Symposium, LA food truck king Roy Choi's presentation riffed on this year's theme of guts. Choi asked a room filled with some of the world's foremost chefs to acknowledge the fact that they're pretty much only feeding privileged communities.
9) How Animals Eat Their Food
This video from Mister Epic Mann shows how a bunch of animals including lizards, rhinoceroses, whales, and more eat their food. It has racked up 90 million views.
8) The Trailer for Foodies the Documentary
Here's the trailer for the upcoming documentary Foodies: The Culinary Jetset, which focuses "on the fine dining subculture of foodies." The film follows a group of "slightly bizarre but charming food maniacs"; release date is sometime in 2014.
7) Paula Deen's Meltdown
Back in June, Paula Deen bailed on the Today show to discuss the release of testimony in which she admitted to using racial slurs (among other things). What followed was a disaster of self-run PR gone rogue, with multiple video apologies uploaded to YouTube that were immediately pulled.
6) Amy's Baking Company on Kitchen Nightmares
In an episode of Kitchen Nightmares, shouty chef Gordon Ramsay quit on Amy's Baking Company. And then hey had a little freakout of Facebook.
5) Triumph the Insult Comic Dog Mocks Beer Nerds
Triumph the Insult Comic Dog visited the Great American Beer Festival, the microbrew expo in Denver, Colorado and mocked various festival-goers and microbrewers for their facial hair, beer bellies, and pretentiousness.
4) Alex Atala Decapitates a Chicken on Stage at MAD
Here's video of chef Alex Atala of D.O.M. in Brazil (currently ranked #6 in the world) beheading a chicken on stage at this year's MAD Symposium. He asked the audience to make the call, and the crowd went wild. "I wanted everyone to feel a stake in the bird's death, which is why I asked the audience to vote," said Atala. "But I was a bit troubled by how insistent they were."
3) A Chicago Restaurant Becomes Alinea for Halloween
In the grand tradition of restaurants going as other restaurants for Halloween, Chicago's Real Kitchen "dressed up" as Alinea.
2) The Trailer for Next's Vegan Menu
From back in May, here's the criminally rad trailer for the vegan menu at Grant Achatz's Chicago restaurant Next (This won the Eater Award for best video of the year.)
1) Jon Stewart's Epic Rant Against Chicago Pizza
The Daily Show's Jon Stewart fueled the NYC-Chicago rivalry with an epic rant against Chicago's deep dish pizza. "When I look at your deep dish f*ckin' pizza, I don't know whether to eat it or throw a coin in it and make a wish," Stewart says. "And if I made a wish, it would be that I'd wish for some real f*ckin' pizza." In response to Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel's objections, Stewart later called a truce.
Honorable Mentions
· SNL's Nightmarish Guy Fieri Christmas Special
· The Winner of MasterChef Junior Cooks Better Than You
· Robicelli's: A Love Story, with Cupcakes
· Introducing the Domino's DomiCopter!
· Cheese Powder: What Is It?
· New York Times Critics Talk Business
· What 2,000 Calories Actually Looks Like
· A Day In The Life Of A Burger
· Ludo Lefebvre Mocks LA Food for Funny or Die
· An 'Invisible Driver' Prank Drive-Thru Attendants
· A Year of Foursquare Check-Ins Around the World
· A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Sriracha Factory
· René Redzepi's Improbable Visit to Jimmy Kimmel Live
· 'Chinese Food,' a Cheesy and Offensive Pop Ode to Take Out
· Sashimi Makes Itself in This Stop-Motion Video
· Watch Thomas Keller Boldly Cameo on Eat, Drink, Love
· Conan O'Brien Tastes Water With a Water Sommelier
· 'Archer' With Anthony Bourdain as the Bastard Chef
· Watch Gordon Ramsay Battle the Swedish Chef
· The Story Behind the McDonald's Coffee Lawsuit
· On Portlandia, Baristas Write a Coffee Shop Manifesto
· SNL's "Pizza Eater" Skit With Melissa McCarthy
· Colbert Slams Yelp as Having 'the Critical Palate of Zagat'
· A Supercut of the Most Awkward Cinematic Meals
· All Year in Eater 2013 [-E-]
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