Yes, Chef! Meet Donut Daddy, the Aussie in the kitchen making the world thirsty.

It might be because of Jeremy Allen White in The Bear, or because these shirtless men are suggestively tonguing and fingering their foodie creations for their thirsty social media audience, but the Hot Chefs of Instagram are taking over the world.

And one of the men leading the pack is Aussie Donut Daddy (@thedonutdaddy).

With 300K followers on Instagram and 2.1 million likes on TikTok, the Melbourne-based doughnut maker already has some major fans overseas with articles written about him in Forbes and The Cut (the latter is actually how I first came across him and decided to investigate further).

Now, at first look at Mr Daddy’s social media feed, his content comes across as the kind of food porn we’ve all come to love and expect: there are beautifully shot photos of a golden croquembouche tower, chocolate souffle with Lotus Biscoff ice-cream and a lime pie doughnut.

But once those reels start, it all changes.

@thedonutdaddy Sweet or sour? #donutdaddy #lemon #zest Key lime pie donut: Key lime pie filling. Candied lime, lime zests. Torched Swiss meringue. Lemon meringue donut: lemon curd filling, lemon zest and candied lemon. Swiss meringue, torched. Decorated with piped meringue and Meringue sticks #meringue #lemon #zesty #lime #keylimepie #pie #key #dessert #chef #pastry #treat #sweet #gourmet #artisan #desserts #yummy #handmade #chef #pastrychef ♬ Edit Phonk (Slowed) - Bgnzinho

Look, there he is in the kitchen (an obvious place to find a culinary aficionado) but… why is he unbuttoning his shirt? 

Oh! He’s getting off to a mixer. Wait, did he just jerk off some dough? Yep, I guess he did and now he’s holding that dough down with his veiny, muscle-y arms, and slapping it like he’s on the set of an actual porno and not showing us how to make a lemon meringue doughnut.

Now, he’s gently, but briskly, fingering some kind of egg mixture. Oh phew, he’s frying his creations, and this part looks like an actual cooking video. But wait – he’s slowing down all those fast cuts to get the money shot…

... and there it is! He’s poked a hole in a doughnut and the meringue is oozing out in slow motion.

That one video has had more than 2.7 million views on TikTok. The comments section on both IG and TikTok have gone crazy. “Who needs Only Fans when you’ve got this?” one woman comments. 

“I identity as dough now,” writes one guy. 

“I think my room is flooded 😭” says one girl.

There are funny comments too, like “Idk what I’m supposed to do after watching this,” and “Mom, can you come get me? I’m scared."

Obviously after watching, I too had many feelings and questions. 

Many, many questions.

And as the serious investigative journalist that I am, I tracked Donut Daddy down to ask him.

Luckily for me (and you) Mr Daddy, aka Anthony Randello, was happy to give me a video call. All the meeting rooms in the office were booked out, so I set myself up in the Mamamia kitchen (it seemed destined) and asked him all of the questions. And you know what? He was so lovely he answered them all.

Because it's my journalistic duty, I'm sharing them with you. 

Presenting: my chat with the founder and owner of Jamm’d dessert bar and Levain Doughnuts, the infamous Donut Daddy.

***

Lizza: Where are you dialling in from?

Donut Daddy: I’m working from home. I just had a couple of meetings, and I’m just about to start another video, so I’m getting everything ready for that.

Lizza: That's a great segue into my questions. How do you even prep for these videos?

Donut Daddy: So, it's not too bad. First deciding on the recipe is the main thing, like, what I'm going to be making. And then once I know that, I segment each part. There might be custard involved, there might be, like, dough involved. Once that's done, I start the filming and make the recipe at the same time. 

Lizza: But where do you then think, “Oh, this is where I’m going to add the sensual [read: porny] elements”?

Donut Daddy: Sometimes I have an idea. Just randomly, I might do this with the custard [Lizza’s note: the screen is a bit pixelated but he’s doing... something with his fingers] or do this with the bench top mixer [see: the pic below for a visual]. But most of the time, I just wing it. I just get in there. And if it, like, feels right, I'll just kind of do it, you know? Yeah, that's how I do it.

Food porn one minute, actual porn the next. Image: Instagram.

Lizza: Food porn existed before you created these videos. And now it's kind of like you’re taking food porn to another level [laughs - I did that a lot in this chat.]

Donut Daddy: Yeah, yeah. Exactly. It's just bringing two things together, that kind of just seemed to work.

Lizza: But is there anything you’ve done in the videos that has made you want to laugh?

Donut Daddy: When I'm making them, I just kind of just go with my gut instinct. I just make the video, do it, whatever, post it. I actually start laughing more when I see other people remix my video, but they're talking over it, and they're like, “What's he doing with that dough?” [laughs] That's when I start laughing at it, because I'm seeing it from someone else's perspective. But making it is quite a serious process, you know? It's quite difficult [making the videos], so I get it done. I do laugh a little bit in some parts. I'm like, “This is ridiculous, but we'll put it in there anyway.”

Lizza: What’s an example of something ridiculous? 

Donut Daddy: There are a lot of examples, but I think, like, when I'm like licking stuff, it’s almost on the edge of ‘This is gonna be too far,’ so I don't put it in too much. I don't mind showing my body and stuff like that, because I've kind of always been like that. So that, to me, doesn't feel too far.

Lizza: So where do you draw the line?

Donut Daddy: Pretty much what I post is where I draw the light. I don't really go much further than that. It seems like the videos that have more innuendoes, people just love them more. And all the people that follow me tend to want it to be more sexualised.

Lizza: But 'suggestive' rather than in your face?

Donut Daddy: Yeah, but even ‘in your face’ gets a lot of good comments. I get a lot of good feedback the more suggestive it is, or even the more just absurdly sexual. I noticed that mainly the women that view my content really want that stuff. Especially if I'm wearing grey track pants, they'll really be into it. And so I don't know if it's just the women that follow me or the general audience. I don't know.

Lizza: So when you say 'absurdly sexual', what exactly do you mean?

Donut Daddy: Like, for instance, if I get a mixer and I do, like, an act of fellatio with the mixer [chuckles]. People really, really like that. There'll be a whole bunch of comments being like, "I want to be that mixer", stuff like that. But I want to keep it quite classy. So there's a fine line between too far and, you know, vanilla.

Lizza: Does this mean an OnlyFans account is out of the question? 

Donut Daddy: I've been playing around with the idea, but right now, I don't think I have enough time with my businesses and everything. But I think it would be a good revenue stream, so there is a possibility in the future. 

Lizza: Sooo, how does this affect your personal life? Are you dating? Do people have weird expectations of dating you?

Donut Daddy: It’s a tricky thing. You know, like, if I'm seeing someone, they have to understand that this is the type of thing that I'm doing. And I'm very honest about who I am and what I do. Because that's all you can really do.

Lizza: But when you're dating someone, do they have then weird expectations about what your relationship will be like? Or what it'd be like in the bedroom? Because they've seen these videos of you going down on a mixer? [Yes friends, I’m a journalist who asks the difficult questions.]

Donut Daddy: There is definitely some kind of expectation, but it's hard to say, because I haven't necessarily asked someone outright, “Do you think I'm a bit freaky?” [laughs] But I think it also, in a way, makes them more comfortable with me after seeing that content, for some reason. It's like they've already met me and they're more comfortable being around me. They trust me more, for some reason. It's hard to kind of put into words, but yeah, it does something to them.

***

So there you have it! That's Donut Daddy, the man behind the food porn.

Okay, now head over to his TikTok and Instagram to explore more of those videos for yourself. You can try his food IRL in Melbourne too. Find out more here.

Featured image: Supplied + Instagram.

Follow Lizza Gebilagin on Instagram @lizza_marie but not on TikTok (she's been holding out for years – feels too Millennial for it).