Daniel Lambert: ‘It takes me five hours to get a minute's worth of content for TikTok’
Book Jacket for Lush by Daniel Lambert
It's not usually a good sign when a video of a chef's concoction makes you want to gag.
But on this occasion, my reaction is exactly what Daniel Lambert is trying to illicit.
"I was just trying to annoy people so they'd comment," he says, without a hint of embarrassment.
"When you annoy people, they comment. And the more people comment, the more TikTok pushes your videos out."
The video we're chatting about is the one where the Terenure chef deep frys a Tayto crisp sandwich. It has close to 324.5k views and close to 600 comments. It's been favourited 800 times.
"I squeezed all the grease out of the sandwich in front of the camera," he says.
"You're looking to agitate people, start arguments. For example, pineapple and pizza. I put a pizza in a pineapple. That just drove people insane."
It's refreshing to hear one of Ireland's TikTok success stories talk so candidly about the road to his success, which involves much more planning and analysis than some might think.
"I put a whiteboard up on the wall, and was trying to figure out why some videos were doing well and others weren't. I figured out anything that I put in a deep fryer got better views, whether it be a piece of cheese or chips or wedges or potato skins, so I just started deep frying everything and the views started skyrocketing. I started to see a pattern.
"People have a fetish for food that's deep fried," he says.
"I've deep fried Tobelorones, Terry's chocolate orange, I deep fried a McDonald's Big Mac...
Striving for viral content didn't come without its criticism, however. Lambert's background was more fine-dining than CookTok, and he'd previously trained with Neven Maguire at the chef's famous MacNean House & Restaurant.
"People were asking me why I was doing it, I am a chef.... but my reasoning was if I build up a following, I'm going to be able to do proper food," he explains.
"There was a method to the madness. Nobody could understand it, but I could understand it. It was a business model."
And it's worked.
The chef has since pivoted to doing "proper cooking" on his TikTok, with short choppy explainer videos for kitchen skills like 'how to chop an onion,' as likely to be found on the @chefdanielamber page as a recipe for a French Omelette.
"I got the whiteboard back up again," he said, "and I figured out, if you put a potato in front of the camera, people stay longer.
"Anytime I put a spud in front of the camera, I got millions of views."
“I noticed as well... if I was using products like Doritos, Coca Cola, and I was putting them on top of foods that people enjoy already [they would do well].
"When people already have an emotional connection with a brand like Coca Cola and you put it with something people love like ribs, it just kind of explodes.”
His smarts also extended to securing brand sponsorship, with the cheeky 27-year-old employing some rather ingenious tactics to get paid.
"I'd no money [when I started making TikToks]," he tells me over the phone. He had lost his job in a local hotel in Donegal due to the pandemic and was eager to start generating his own income.
"I wanted sponsorship. I started sending emails to Tesco, Supervalu, Dunnes Stores... but none of them got back to me.
"So then I started really aggressively marketing Supervalu's products and eventually the ASAI (Advertising Standards Authority for Ireland) got involved... Supvervalu got on to me then!," he says with a laugh.
"I was trying to get their attention. They said 'you have it now' and they started sponsoring me."
Lambert can make it look easy, but there's a lot of graft that goes into his 60-second-videos - most of which will make you drool rather than gag.
Some of his most-popular recipes on TikTok include Irish Hash Browns (3.2M views), Garlic Mayonaise (2.2M views) and classic Mashed Potato (1.5M views).
After two years, Lambert has learned lots of valuable lessons about what does and doesn't perform on the platform.
"The secret to online success on Tik Tok is diversifying your content.
"It should be different to everybody else's. It shouldn't be something people have seen before."
The chef also believes in putting the work in when it comes to content creation.
"I bought myself a proper camera with a little image stabilization lens and I use that everyday. I went and got myself a proper microphone.
"I went on to Youtube and took a video editing course, a sound course, a camera course, taught myself how to shoot videos and take photos properly... it's taken me a while but I got it in the end.
"I shoot everything myself, I edit everything myself, I handle everything myself.
"When brands come to me, I can do everything, I am the chef, the photographer, the videographer.
"There's a massive gap in the market for that because it's very expensive for them to create content."
But while Lambert might be one of Ireland's kings of CookTok for now, the chef has a lot more he wants to do.
For now, there's a new book, Lush, which he promises is "completely different to your average cookbook."
There are recipes for a slow-cooked Meatball Marinara (inspired by Subway) in there, Cheeseburger Tacos and a Slow-cooked Chicken Curry Lasagne to name but a few.
"There's no judgement in it," he says. "It's the food you really want to eat."
His favourite recipe is the Irish-style nachos ( we've managed to nab the recipe for that, you're welcome).
“I know a lot of chefs would disagree with [messing with classic recipes]," he says, but for him, there should be "no rules" in cooking.
As for when we might get to taste some of Lambert's deep-fried delicacies in person, he says a restaurant is in the pipeline... just not yet.
"I'd like to open my own place, but I don't think it's a good idea to open a restaurant the way the economy is right now," he says. "I am going to wait."
Two years ago, the TikToker's fellow chefs thought he was "crazy," he admits.
"Now, they’re asking me to show them how to do it."
