Lost Moments #4: That Epic Meal Time Episode – The Missing Bits

Here’s another Lost Moment – a blog entry that I meant to finish a post a while back. Enjoy!

If you haven’t yet seen the Epic Meal Time episode that was shot at Shopify (which features a cameo appearance by an accordion player whom you might recognize), go check it out:

It was shot on the Saturday of the Canada Day weekend inside our offices, on our rooftop and in the ByWard Market neighbourhood where we’re located. I wrote about it in this earlier blog entry.

Now that the episode is out in the wild, I can post some more pictures. They didn’t want me to give away the topic of the episode before it went online and asked me not to post any photos of the food they were preparing, with the notable exception of bacon since every Epic Meal Time meal features that wonderful, wonderful meat.

The Epic Meal Bros spent the early part of the afternoon getting their hands on as many different kinds of bird as they could. Rock cornish hens are fairly easy to come by; guinea fowl are a little harder to find. I was impressed that they brought back some quail, which they candied, and it was delicious:

It’s not an Epic Meal Time episode unless something — well, actually a lot of things — end up wrapped in bacon:

Sometimes they use “meat glue” to hold things together. Other times, they fall back on the tried-and-true toothpick:

If you were to listen in to one of their shoots but not actually see what was happening, you might not be able to tell if it was Epic Meal Time or Hustler: “Bro, I need a close-up of those legs. Glistening! I need them glistening! Sauce that shit up, bro!”

Whatever wasn’t sauced up and grilled ended up breaded and deep-fried…

…and deep-frying and breading ain’t just for wings anymore:

It takes the better part of a day to produce what ends up as five minutes worth of bro-tastic, meat-laden, swear-a-riffic cooking video. The cooking phase can go on for hours. I took this shot in the afternoon:

…as well as this shot, much later that evening. The grilling went on into the night.

Tyler’s Chicken Wing Necklace

One of the Epic Meal Bros, possibly Tyler himself, came up with the idea of wearing some chicken wing fashion. He sat down in our kitchen and started saucing and stringing the wings into a necklace while the crew photographed and videoed the process:

Harley decided to do a little art directing:

Tyler’s wasn’t convinced that the necklace worked for him, but we all gave him the thumbs-up:

Just a little more styling…

…and it was time to hit the streets! The plan was to fetch more liquor for the shoot (it’s true, there’s actual drinking going on during an Epic Meal Time shoot) and perhaps some footage of women taking bites from the wing necklace.

“Baco noir. It’s sorta spelled like bacon. It should pair well, amirite?”

The liquor store has an office with one of those two-way mirrors and Tyler passed right by it, catching his first look at himself with the chicken necklace. “So that’s what I look like!” he exclaimed. “It feels like there’s a gallon of sauce on my neck, but there’s really only a little bit.”

The Epic Meal Bros are famous. While at the liquor store, we were stopped half a dozen times by people who recognized them. These people were invariably in their late teens or twenties, had “bro”-ish dispositions and many looked as if they shopped exclusively at at A&F or Hollister and had collar erections that lasted for more than four hours. There was a high baseball cap factor, many worn backwards. You know the type.

Harley and Tyler are quite used to this sort of recognition now and greeted each fan warmly, happily posing with them for photos.

“Awrite, lay-deez! Who wants some necklace?”

Our first takers!

They got a little too enthusiastic. There was a little shoving match:

Luckily for us, violence and hatred cannot prevail when there are tasty chicken wings to be had. It’s like the “McDonald’s Peace Dividend”: countries that have the Golden Arches don’t go to war against each other. The ladies quickly put aside their differences and concentrated on what mattered – getting free chicken wings.

A little farther down the street, we found some more takers:

“Muscles Glasses” is thinking a replacing his Drakkar Noir with chicken wing sauce.

Single gents: next time you go out on the town, try wearing a chicken wing necklace!

After all the cooking and street shots came the final scene: the closer, where the Epic Meal Bros eat their creation. They shot this scene in our boardroom:

That’s our summer intern, Anna, helping move food from the prep sites to the table. I’ll bet she wasn’t expecting to be part of an Epic Meal Time shoot when she signed up for the job!

Little-known fact: those plastic cases that you can put on digital cameras so you can do underwater photography are also barbecue sauce-proof. They shot a scene that was supposed to be from the point of view of a chicken wing getting dunked:

“Are we good to go?”

And with jack and coke in hand, Harley starts the final scene and closes with “Next time, we’re eatin’ glass!”

Once the final shot was in the can, we got to eat the remaining food. There were about a dozen of us, and there was enough for all. My favourites were the candied quail and the cheese sauce-covered breaded wings.