Latest / Best of: Features / Meet the LA-area cook who's gone viral for his Meta AI-filmed cooking videos

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Meet the LA-area cook who's gone viral for his Meta AI-filmed cooking videos · Best of: Features

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  Meet the LA area cook who's gone viral for his meta AI
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  filmed cooking videos. This article is being
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  read by an automated voice generated by Everlett. Multiple pans, some with
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  giant flames licking their sides, sizzle loudly on burners while steaks rest
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  on the side of a large French top style cooking range. Fast
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  working hands toss gnocchi and sauce before flipping a pan full of
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  pasta and garnishing it with herbs. Plates clatter into place on a
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  shining metal table top, each given a swoosh of sauce before those
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  stakes, sliced smoothly and with precision, are dropped on top. The lightning
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  fast video is simultaneously chaotic and thrilling, and a glimpse of yet
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  another weeknight working in The grueling, impressive restaurant industry. No, this isn't
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  a scene from The Bear. It's one of a growing collection of
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  bird's eye view videos shot on Meta's AI Ray-Ban glasses by a
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  21-year-old California line cook. The compelling videos record the day-to-day life of
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  Ryan Gilhooley as he works service at a local bistro in the
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  small, sleepy, well-to-do Los Angeles suburb of Westlake Village on the border
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  of Ventura County. Almost every single one of Gilhooley's fast, fiery videos
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  from the line have gone viral. Tarzana native Gilhooley has worked at
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  the Moody Rooster, tucked into a strip mall just off Highway one
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  hundred and one since he graduated from high school at seventeen, save
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  for a brief five month stint at another restaurant. Inspired by other
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  cooks at the Moody Rooster who had already started wearing and filming
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  with meta glasses, Gilhooley started shooting and posting his action packed cooking
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  videos from the restaurant's compact open kitchen in June. It's been a
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  rocket ship since The Gilhooly's POV videos have gained practically unprecedented traction
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  online for both their realness and the voyeuristic itch they satisfy. His
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  Instagram handle, at Gilhooly Cooks, has racked up roughly 930,000 followers in
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  just a few months, and his reels regularly garner hundreds of thousands
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  of likes. The top ten most watched videos in Gilhoy's Reels feed
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  have a combined viewer count well north of two hundred million. Wildly,
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  Gilhooley said that he'd never even posted to social media before this
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  summer. Was a little nervous and hesitant to do it. Gilhooley said
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  of posting his first reel, which, according to him, has received more
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  than sixty million views, and has more than one hundred seven thousand
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  likes and one thousand three hundred comments on Instagram. One day we
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  were just doing a big push, he said, referring to a rush
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  of kitchen orders all being sent out in a short window of
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  time, and two days later, I was still wondering if I should
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  post it When I did, it just went crazy. Gilhooley's impressive videos
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  often start with him muttering F me to himself while juggling multiple
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  pans on the stove, a refrain many in the comment section have
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  identified with. It's since become something of a catchphrase for the young
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  cook. I think for people who work in kitchens they can relate
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  to how busy it is, Gilhooley said, noting how the glasses allow
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  him to work freely, without tying up his hands for filming. And
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  the average person maybe doesn't understand what actually goes into making their
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  food, or why it might take thirty minutes to come out when
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  you have a back line of six or seven orders you're working
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  on. During our interview, Gilhooly regularly referenced and praised Moody Rooster co
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  owner and executive chef Colin Crannell, whom Gilhooley described as a mentor.
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  Crannell cooked around Los Angeles for years before opening his cozy suburban
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  bistro, which serves Mediterranean inflected farm to table fare, with his wife
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  Vicky in a former Taco Bell in twenty seventeen. He saw an
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  early spark in Gilhooly that he wanted to foster. He was in
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  the same boat I was in when I was his age, of
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  wanting to find work in a kitchen but getting turned away, Crannell
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  said. I remember him emailing me when he still had one year
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  left in school. I'm of the mindset that if someone's interested, get
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  them in here and see what they've got. He added. He came
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  in with this mindset that he was going to be a badass.
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  He worked his way up through the stations. Like Gilhooley, Crannell has
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  been surprised at just how much reach those restaurant cooking videos have
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  on social media. Collectively, the POV style videos have garnered hundreds of
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  millions of views just on Instagram, with another 64,000 followers watching along
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  on TikTok. Despite consistent online pushback against wearable tech with options to
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  record people, like Meta's AI Ray Ban glasses, the comment section on
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  Gilhoy's videos is almost universally positive. Smart glasses like Meta's, the
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  sales of which tripled in 2025 over 2024, have elicited both excitement
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  and scrutiny in recent years, including from the service industry. In February,
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  a report in the New York Times detailed the growing discomfort over
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  the use of such glasses by influencers and food reviewers, calling workers
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  and other customers captive participants in some social media videos. At a
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  basic level, concerns include them fact that the glasses look like regular
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  glasses, so workers and customers don't always know that they're being filmed,
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  despite built in and easily bypassed, visual alerts on the glasses that
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  turn on when in recording mode. As Meta discusses plans to add
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  facial recognition to its specs, there's another layer to the debate over
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  how the technology affects civil liberties and privacy. Cranell said that he's
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  supportive of Gilhooley and his other cooks using metaglasses to film videos,
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  and he often wears the himself to create content. Some of the
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  Moody Rooster staff have asked not to be filmed, a request that
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  he and those who film in the kitchen honor, and Crannell is
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  in the process of drafting policies around the technology that the staff
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  will have to abide by. For Gilhooley, the rise to online fame
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  has been swift. He's already enlisted a manager and has filmed his
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  first collaboration with a major cookware brand. According to Cranell, the restaurant
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  has also seen an uptick in business, with people making the hour
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  long drive up from LA because of the social media content. You're
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  capturing the energy and the skill set of craftsmen and artisans and
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  what they see in the moment, Cranell said. That's what people are
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  responding to. I'm just really blessed that all this is happening, but
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  even more so that I get to do it at the restaurant
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  I love, Gilhooly said. I'm just taking it day by day.