Vice’s food channel, Munchies, turned its gaze towards Glasgow last summer and their report from the city has so far clocked up over half a million views on YouTube.
The delightfully named Charlet Duboc, Surrey born model and journalist, swapped drinking cocktails out of jam jars in Shoreditch for her first trip to the wilds of Scotland. She treats this journey into the unknown with the seriousness of a war correspondent.
The video, which was recently promoted on social media, has a predictable opening – a conversation with a scuttered guy in the back of a Glasgow cab – but then Vice Media has crafted a global empire from such encounters.
There is some allusion to the burgeoning high end restaurant scene around these parts but the focus of this segment falls on probing questions (“why make a sausage square?”, “what’s a tattie?”, “what even is Irn Bru?”) and the culinary properties of a particular fortified wine.
Vice has successfully ballooned from a punky sub-cultures magazine into a youth media and digital powerhouse. From their headquarters in Brooklyn they marshal an army of media hipsters to produce content on an industrial scale across imprints like Motherboard, Noisey and Thump.
The full clip is at the bottom of the page and it is worth revisiting.
Look out for the indie buckie boys with puffed up hair putting their sunglasses on in their living room, a brief appearance of University Cafe, a woman who really loves steak pie and the confirmation that a Vice cameraman looks exactly like you think a Vice cameraman looks.
Star of the show, without a doubt, is self-styled Mad Chef, Bar Bloc‘s Danny McLaren.
We want to hang about in his kitchen so he can make us lunch. He does wild things with Irn Bru and pulled pork, as many of you know.
His sweary sandwich-making turns the faux social anthropology and dubious detours on Munchies’ Guide to Glasgow into something worthwhile.
Where would you have taken Vice on a food tour?