Internet of Yum(opens in a new tab) digs into all the things that make us drool while we're checking our feeds.

Few things stop a web-surfer in their tracks like an F.O.U.S. You know, Food of Unusual Size.

Whether it’s a pizza the size of a car or a cake the size of a penny, culinary creations scaled to the extreme are among the most delightful treasures to uncover online. YouTube tycoons have built their empires on culinary stunts with millions of subscribers flocking to see their super-sized dishes. Instagram artists have made their mark in miniature, creating tiny worlds for fans to peer into, double-tap, and follow. 

Not all of this artwork is made from edible ingredients. But whether it's made of plaster, flour, resin, sugar, wood, oil, or glue — if the meals we’re scrolling by look delicious and ridiculous? Plenty of us will be clicking.

Of course, like many online trends, enjoying foods of unusual sizes predates social media. The practice of sculpting miniature food out of wax began in early 20th century Japan and soon became an iconic staple in the country’s culture of cuteness. By 1994, the world’s largest pancake(opens in a new tab) — measuring 49 feet in diameter and weighing nearly 7,000 pounds — was gracing the city of Rochdale, Manchester in the UK. It hasn’t been outsized since.

Our fascination with grub mammoth and miniscule seems to persist in part because of the immense amount of work required to create these dishes. It’s labor that can be easily appreciated, with little more than a glance summoning all kinds of questions: How did you make all that dough? Where did you get an oven that small? Why would you want that much ketchup?

So, who are the creatives breaking their backs and straining their eyes to feed our feeds? We visited their digital kitchens to find out.

Those making the very small

Tom Brown likes his food small. He also likes his dishes, his utensils, his cookware, and his appliances small. Of course, you can’t buy a five-inch functional stove at IKEA. So Brown has dedicated his artistic life to making miniature kitchens and dishes from scratch.

“When I was a little boy, I gained a fascination with miniature kind of by accident,” Brown says over the phone. “I had a strong desire to own a guitar, but my parents wouldn’t buy one for me — and I was a bit of a stubborn, defiant kid. So, I was like, ‘Alright, if you’re not gonna buy one for me, I’m going to make one for myself.’”

Using a pocket knife, the only tool the youngster had, Brown went about constructing a two-inch guitar of his very own. Of course, he couldn’t play it. But he soon found himself fascinated with the process of making things mini, replicating “pretty much anything” in his life on a micro-scale.

As a student at the Alberta College of Art & Design, Brown’s adult passion for cooking collided with his childhood love of miniatures. Proudly calling himself “Pizza Tom,” Brown went around campus serving teeny-tiny pizzas(opens in a new tab) in teeny-tiny boxes to his classmates who liked it more than a little bit. 

More than a meal, Brown’s cooking process became a central part of his artform. He regularly sets up shop in public places so that crowds of unsuspecting “patrons” (they never get a bill) can watch him work. Luckily, his miniature kitchen is marvelously travel-sized.

This process ignited a passion for compact cuisine that’s taken Brown and his edible performances around the globe. Using his skills in ceramics, woodworking, metal working, jewelry making, and yes, cooking, Brown has made dozens of appliances which in turn he’s used to make dozens of dishes for eager audiences. 

From loaded baked potatoes(opens in a new tab) and pumpkin spice cupcakes(opens in a new tab) to mojitos(opens in a new tab) and crackable eggs(opens in a new tab), Brown’s Instagram(opens in a new tab) features a vast, yet itsy-bitsy menu that could best many a full-scale restaurant. He’s gained nearly 23,000 followers for his trouble, but enjoying his creations online could never capture the magic of eating them.

“What I find so transporting about the miniature experience is the idea that we eat food every day for sustenance, and then there’s an aspect of pleasure that comes with food,” Brown says.

“But when you create a miniature version of food, you're completely removing the idea that you're getting any sustenance out of it at all. A miniature pizza might have seven calories, enough to keep you alive for 20 minutes or something like that. So what's left over is purely an aesthetic experience. It's purely you tasting the food.”

The purity of his “miniature universe” has allowed Brown not only to expand his talents as an artist, chef, and performer, a skill the previously shy creator thought he would never master, but has also given him an escape from our often tumultuous, regular-sized world.

“It has given me a new appreciation for myself. And in my darker times, I can go into my world of miniatures and find a place of solace, find that meditative, relaxation state that helps so many of us when we’re having a difficult time.”

Brown isn’t the only one seeking refuge in a tasty, microscopic world. TikTok sensation Izzie Feehrer and her Chinese dwarf hamsters Stuart and Little of HamStarz(opens in a new tab) have their own mini eatery to visit when the mood strikes.

An undergrad at the University of Vermont whose viral pets recently landed a segment(opens in a new tab) on Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, Feehrer doesn’t have the years of experience Brown gained in art school — she’s actually in the middle of earning her Bachelor of Science in elementary education — but her passion for miniatures is just as vibrant.

Inspired by a dollhouse she played with growing up, Feehrer began creating pocket-sized playplaces for her pocket-sized pals last winter break. She filmed videos of Stuart and/or Little (they’re a bit tricky to tell apart) snuggled by the Christmas tree(opens in a new tab), flying across the moon a la E.T.(opens in a new tab), and sprinting on their wheel to the Chariots of Fire theme(opens in a new tab). Of course, it was when Feehrer began placing her little buddies in culinary settings that viewership took off.

“I’d say the fame of my TikToks started with the video of my hamster watching Ratatouille(opens in a new tab) with a chef’s hat that I made,” Feehrer recalls with a giggle. “I just put it on him and I thought it was really cute! So I posted that with the [Ratatouille soundtrack] in the background and that got like a million views. And now, I think it has like over 4 million views which is just crazy.”

Giving the people what they want, Feehrer filmed even more Ratatouille-inspired videos in addition to other miniature scenes. Her hamsters have enjoyed tiny cakes(opens in a new tab), tiny bowls of Cheerios(opens in a new tab), and even a tiny bread basket built for two. (Don’t worry, it’s all made of ingredients safe for the little hammies to eat.) 

Feehrer credits much of her success to her hamsters’ unique dispositions — Stuart is supremely energetic and fun to film, while Little is a bit more laid-back and easy to pose — but thinks the uniting factor for her audiences comes from a love of imagination.

“I just think [people like] the creativity of the little scenes and everything,” Feehrer says of her ever-expanding following, which recently spread to Instagram(opens in a new tab). “One of the coolest things is to see all the different languages that people comment in on the videos. There's Mandarin, German, French, and a bunch of other ones. It shows just how far it has reached.”

While Stuart and Little connect the globe one pair of stuffed cheeks at a time, Feehrer thinks up more projects for the future and improves her miniature craft. 

She’s interested in incorporating more humans into her videos and recreating some of her favorite scenes from Disney movies. But should her future videos call for appetizers, entrées, or desserts, she’ll have to put all her effort into cooking. “They’re kind of picky eaters.”

Those making the very big

Peter Anton has just one piece he won’t sell.

“It's a fish head, it's a raw fish head,” says the seasoned artist, whose gigantic, photorealistic food sculptures have been shown in galleries around the world. “When I was a small child, my mother would cook fish. So there were times I would put the heads of — this is going to sound bizarre — but I would put the heads in jars of water hoping that the fish would grow back.”

A lover of the fantastical who eats a piece of dark chocolate every night before bed, Anton began his career averse to a life of creativity.

Growing up in Connecticut near Yale University, Anton ran into a lot of aspiring artists he felt were “always complaining” about their craft. Although he was naturally talented at drawing and sculpting (so talented his elementary school teachers often asked to keep his class assignments instead of returning them), Anton was inclined towards a more straight-forward job.

But his innate skills for visual creation persisted, and Anton began experimenting more with his artistic abilities as an adult. When he began visiting high-end galleries with a passion project in tow, he grew determined to make a career of art.

“I made a giant cantaloupe, I went to New York City, and I was riding subways with it,” Anton recalls. “That’s the first time I saw the reaction. People were laughing, coming up to me, talking to me about it.”

The monstrous melon(opens in a new tab) wasn’t met particularly well by gallery owners — they were “put off” by it, he says. But Anton knew the reactions on the subway were more powerful than those of any critic. Big food connected deeply with people, reminding them of simpler, warmer, happier times.

“They all have stories, their own personal stories — ‘Oh my God, this reminds me of holidays when I was nine years old’ — and it just puts people in a very good mood and connects them with the deepest emotions from when they were first experiencing life at an early age and taking everything in. I think food is like a strong memory.”

Chasing that reaction has motivated Anton to make humongous chow for decades, perfecting the techniques needed for shiny sunny side-up eggs(opens in a new tab), mouthwatering glazed doughnuts(opens in a new tab), and sizzling hamburgers served with fries(opens in a new tab). Anton says he was particularly excited when he mastered the art of recreating cake. “I think it took me 15 years.” 

Nearly 40,000 viewers enjoy Anton’s work on Instagram(opens in a new tab), often sharing their own memories in the comments. This summer, Anton’s latest exhibition, titled “Sweet Dreams,” is set to appear at the Lyman Allyn Art Museum in New London, Connecticut (pandemic permitting), where collectors will vye to take home some of his more sugary work.

Per Anton, one of his 4-foot-by-4-foot chocolate box sculptures typically sells for $68,000. Heaven knows how much he could get for that fish head.

“People that come and visit always want the fish,” Anton laughs. “And the more people know I'm connected to that, the more they want it. It’s crazy.”

The only thing crazier than a bunch of fine art collectors fighting over a fake fish head the size of a hubcap? The YouTubers getting knee-deep in very real, very large vats of jello, pudding, cereal, and more for their fascinated subscribers.

Big food on YouTube is a subgenre so massive it can feel impossible to catch every edible piece of entertainment. Tasty, Epic Meal Time, Dope or Nope, Troom Troom, Collins Key — all of these successful channels have tried their spatulas at gigantic cuisine. But it’s Vat19, the online novelty store-turned-streaming sensation, that was among the first to grab a seat at the enormous dinner table. 

Vat19(opens in a new tab) began making out-of-the-box commercials for their products as a means of promoting their store on YouTube. But the free ad-space soon turned into an obsession with colossal culinary creations.

“One of the first hip products we had in our store was a five-pound gummy bear,” Vat19 founder Jamie Salvatori says. “So, we’re thinking, ‘OK, what thing can we do next?’ And I remember we started selling these bags of just the marshmallows from Lucky Charms. So you’ve got all the healthy oats out of the way, and it's just a bag of those crunchy marshmallows. Well, of course the next step is to fill up a cereal bowl the size of a hot tub(opens in a new tab) with those marshmallows and get into it, you know?” Well, sure.

The make-it-bigger trend soon had producers and performers at Vat19 swimming in a 3,000-pound jello cup(opens in a new tab), climbing across a six-foot-wide gummy pizza(opens in a new tab), and shoving “the world’s largest gummy worm(opens in a new tab)” down a sink disposal to see if it would clog the drain.

Wildly entertaining and maniacally ambitious, Salvatori’s bonkers ideas often have Vat19’s creators reminding him they’re not engineers — “We went to art school, Jamie!” — but an overflowing love for making gigantic food oozes from their channel. Salvatori says the kindness of their team and the light-hearted nature of their projects is what keeps their 7 million subscribers coming back.

“For some reason, it makes you smile to see it, and I think it comes across on camera that we're genuinely having a good time doing this. Laughter is contagious, and you can’t help but be in that same mood.”

Even as he admires his “genuinely really nice” employees and offers profuse thanks to Vat19’s audience, the chipper Salvatori is such a big fan of this artform he can’t help but compliment a competitor. “Are you familiar with Hellthy Junk Food? They’re super nice people. We’re such big fans of them.”

Sure enough, as soon as Hellthy Junk Food(opens in a new tab) co-creator JP Lambiase picks up the phone, he’s just as warm as promised. Lambiase shares that he and his then-girlfriend-now-wife Julia Goolia began Hellthy Junk Food as a way to document their attempts at nutritious eating — hence the channel name.

“‘If no one watches, at least we can watch it back and make the recipes again.’” That’s what Lambiase says he told Goolia to lure her into the YouTube game. But people did watch, and soon the duo was using their effervescent charm and chemistry to tackle better, bigger, less nutritious challenges.

Combining Goolia’s expertise in fine-dining with JP’s mechanical engineering degree and 10 years of experience as a line cook, the pair began making huge sushi rolls(opens in a new tab), massive chicken nuggets(opens in a new tab), and a jumbo-sized take on Wendy’s famous Baconator(opens in a new tab) — in addition to more regularly-sized programming. As with Vat19, the response was overwhelmingly positive and encouraging, even when the work was exhausting.

Pushing their craft to the absolute limit for the audience is what keeps Lambiase and Goolia going. Even in the face of the coronavirus pandemic, they’re churning out videos of skateboard-sized Hot Pockets(opens in a new tab) and microwave-sized cartons of General Tso’s(opens in a new tab) for viewers to enjoy from home — despite lacking their typical resources of abundant ingredients and mouths to feed.

Like many giant creators, Lambiase is conscientious about not wasting all of the very big food he makes by making sure much of it gets eaten. In recent weeks, he and Goolia have had to come up with ways to scale back their production.

“We made a giant Chinese takeout box, but there's so much empty, dead space in there that if we were to fill it with food, it would just be too much. So we just stuffed it with all sorts of things… and we laid [the food] on top of a tray that sat at the very top of the to-go box, but just recessed enough that the rest was hidden. It looked like a mound of Chinese food, but really it was just like a dinner for two.”

Reflecting on the project, Lambiase muses: “Yeah it’s giant, but it’s also art.” 

And the ties that bind them 

When asked what advice these chefs and artists would give to fans aspiring to make their own unusually-sized cuisine, the answers are as warm as fresh-baked cookies.

Brown urges patience with the tiny details. Feehrer cautions against getting the wrong kind of hamster from Petco. Anton hopes you can be honest through your art (and he would love to have someone to mentor someday.) Salvatori says you have to plan ahead, mourning the braided-gummy rope he’d hoped would be used to climb the side of Vat19’s building. “I spent all this time trying to do it and it just didn't work at all.”

But it’s Lambiase who sums up the magical world of FOUSes best: “If you want to do it, you're going to enjoy every step of it. You're going to enjoy the failure, you're going to enjoy the successes, and you're going to love it like it’s your baby. That's what food should be. It should always be a labor of love.”

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