The Unusual Food Critic Elijah Quashie

I love chicken! It would be difficult to find someone who doesn’t. For chicken lovers like myself, there is nothing better than a quirky guide on the best chicken burgers and wings. Elijah Quashie is the Chicken Connouisseur and is the brains behind the popular YouTube series, The Pengest Munch.

The chicken-lover-turned-critic offers an unusual combination of humour and yes, chicken knowledge, in his video reviews of London chicken shops. His videos have garnered millions of views and recently won Quashie a book deal.

With no professional training, Quashie seems to have carved out a niche spot for himself in the food critic industry. Boyish looking and dressed in a suit, he is a far cry from your typical Michelin chef and yet “what Quashie may also be doing is creating a Michelin Guide for London’s fried chicken shops, whose only accreditation has been from word of mouth, corny signboards and health & safety standards”.

Quashie is challenging a long-established food critic industry by choosing to operate outside of it, and is arguably succeeding at it.

“Some places you go to, you get turned down for a job because you don’t have this and that from here and there, but you can do the job. That’s just the way the system works really. I think it’s the same in people’s minds, though it doesn’t have to be that way," says Quashie.

The popularity of the Pengest Munch videos could be attributed to Quashie’s humour and way with language, but I would also argue that people do genuinely take his reviews seriously. Quashie does have some influence on the decisions of consumers. I definitely look up his reviews when looking for chicken shops in London and I have not been disappointed. It would be interesting to find out from the chicken shop owners with good Pengest Munch reviews if this has had any effect on their business.