Nicholas Channing DiGiovanni (born May 19, 1996) is an American celebrity chef, entertainer, and internet personality.[1][2] As of June 2024, DiGiovanni has over 33 million followers across his social media accounts, including YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram.
DiGiovanni was born on May 19, 1996, in Barrington, Rhode Island, to Chris and Sudie DiGiovanni (née Naimi).[3] He is of Italian, Persian, German, and British descent.[4][5] He is the eldest of four brothers. He developed a passion for food at a young age by watching his grandmother and great-grandmother cook meals for the family.[6]
DiGiovanni attended high school at Milton Academy, where he graduated cum laude. He served as co-head of the Milton Academy Community Service program.[7] After graduating from high school, DiGiovanni went to Harvard University, where he created his own concentration called "Food and Climate".[8] As part of his coursework, he attended lectures taught by Massimo Bottura, Grant Achatz and José Andrés.[9] For his senior year, DiGiovanni analyzed data on carbon emissions in 36 international restaurants from Singapore to San Francisco. His thesis was advised by American author and journalist Michael Pollan.[8]
DiGiovanni got accepted to attend Harvard Business School through the 2+2 deferral program. In January 2023, he let Harvard know he was not planning to matriculate.[10][11]
2019–2020: MasterChef and internet beginnings[edit]
During his senior year of college, DiGiovanni attended a casting call for season 10ofMasterChef.[8] He was selected to compete on the show and finished in third place.[8] To film the show, DiGiovanni reportedly left in the middle of the semester at Harvard without informing his professors. He returned the next season as a mentor for finalists.[12] After completing MasterChef and graduating from Harvard, DiGiovanni began to post cooking videos on YouTube.[13] In his first-ever YouTube video, DiGiovanni cooked the dessert he would have made in the MasterChef finale, which has over 3.6 million views as of June 2024.[14] He then began to regularly post videos of himself cooking different foods.
In 2021, DiGiovanni was included in the Forbes30 Under 30 list for Food and Drink.[20] The same year, DiGiovanni won YouTube's Streamy Award for Food, an award recognizing the world's top food creator of the year.[21] In November 2021, DiGiovanni, with Lynja, broke the Guinness World Record for the largest ever cake pop, which weighed 97 pounds 8.52 ounces (44.240 kg).[22][23][24][25] DiGiovanni is the lead ambassador of the Farmlink Project.[26] Additionally, in 2021, DiGiovanni participated in the #TeamSeas campaign founded by YouTuber MrBeast, which raised $30 million to clean up 30 million pounds (14 million kilograms) of trash in the ocean.[27]
In 2022, he partnered with Chipotle to donate 20 million pounds of food.[28] He was a Webby Award recipient in 2022.[29] In June 2022, he broke another Guinness World Record for the largest ever chicken nugget, which weighed 20.96 kg (46.2 lb).[30] In August, he visited the most fast food restaurants in 24 hours (69 restaurants).[31] In October, he beat Gordon Ramsay's record for the fastest time to fillet a 10 lb (4.5 kg) fish by five seconds; completing it in 1 minute exactly. On the same day he constructed the world's largest sushi roll, which measured at 2.15 metres (7 ft 1 in) in diameter.[32] In November, he and Nigel Ng created the largest fortune cookie at 1.47 kg (3.2 lb)[33] and made the largest donation of turkey in 24 hours (64,463.44 kg (142,117.6 lb) - roughly 7,620 turkeys).[34]
On May 11, 2023,[35] DiGiovanni, alongside Ramsay, broke the Guinness World Record for the largest Beef Wellington, which weighed 25.76 kg (56.8 lb). This was his ninth Guinness World Record and was broken in partnership with celebrity chefs Ramsay, Max the Meat Guy, Guga Foods and The Golden Balance.[36] On June 13, 2023, DiGiovanni released his debut cookbook, Knife Drop. It debuted at #1 on the New York Times Bestsellers list and remained on the list for five consecutive weeks.[37]
