A social media cook who supersizes snacks has revealed the one food he can’t enlarge: a grape.
Phoenix Ross, 27, from Notting Hill, has gained online fame creating giant versions of popular foods, from Big Macs and Jaffa Cakes to a Creme Egg the weight of a child.
His “But Bigger” series on TikTok and Instagram features colossal culinary creations, including giant pub chips, a baked bean engulfing a slice of toast, and a football-sized tortellini.
However, Mr. Ross admits that despite requests, a giant grape remains elusive.
The restaurant photographer, who initially focused on making viral food trends and British classics, turned to supersizing after a dip in his online engagement. His aim, he says, is to “appease the algorithm gods.”
Opting for “vibe-based cooking” instead of following a recipe, Mr Ross has wowed his hundreds of thousands of followers, gaining millions of views and a host of requests for other food items such as a giant grape, which he said is “completely impossible”.
“There’s so many good cooks on the internet already – I can make a beef wellington and a lasagne but I wanted to do something to stand out,” he told PA Real Life.
“I decided to go the opposite way and do more wacky stuff, I just wanted to do funny things.”
The cook said he has been a home cook for his “entire life” and prior to becoming a restaurant photographer, he was “freelance chef-ing” for three years.
“This really helped me hone my skills but I was always a good cook before that, I was always interested in it,” he said.
Over the last six months, Mr Ross has been sharing his culinary exploits on Instagram and TikTok under the handle Shef Phoenix – using an ‘S’ instead because he claims he is “not a real chef”.
“The food I make for content, sometimes I call it ‘camera food’ as it’s not really something I would ever make to eat,” he explained.
“Even the tamer stuff, it’s not something I would create if I wasn’t trying to appease the algorithm gods.”
On his platforms, Mr Ross has dabbled in viral food trends and cooked up a variety of British classics, such as Cornish pasties, pies, stews and toad in the hole, with the aim of being “antagonistic towards Americans”.
“Those videos were more like rage bait, I kind of wanted people to argue in the comments,” he said.
“I feel like British food gets a lot of hate online which isn’t totally justified – Americans come and say our food looks like rations.”
Over time, however, Mr Ross said he noticed a “slump” in his views.
“I thought I had to do something, and I had to do something big,” he said.
With this, Mr Ross created his But Bigger series where he showcases giant versions of normal food to his 116,000 TikTok and 129,000 Instagram followers.
To date, he has created massive replicas of a baked bean, a Big Mac, a Creme Egg, a Jaffa Cake, a gyoza, a dumpling, a stuffed tortellini, pub chips and Froot Loops cereal.
Mr Ross’s video showing how he built a giant Creme Egg, which required 20 chocolate bars and four kilograms of sugar to create the fondant filling, earned 2.8 million TikTok views, while his pub chips which spanned the length of a baking tray gained 2.5 million hits.
One of the most popular clips on his profile to date, with 3.1 million views, was the giant baked bean, which was described by one TikTok user as “totally majestic”.
To achieve his super-size goals, Mr Ross said he does not follow a recipe or write anything down, instead opting for what he calls “vibe-based cooking”.
“I just do things and hope it works,” he said.
To create the giant baked bean, Mr Ross blended a whole can of Heinz beans together before adding flour.
From there, he was able to shape the mixture into a large bean shape which covered a slice of bread.
He also poured the tomato sauce from the tin over the top.
For his giant tortellini, which gained 3.6 million views on TikTok, he made normal pasta dough and created a filling using ricotta cheese, spinach, garlic and walnuts.
He folded the pasta around the mixture, saying it is “just the way you would do with a regular size, but imagining it’s eight times bigger”.
Mr Ross said he frequently receives requests from his followers to scale up the size of certain foods – but there is an overwhelming demand for a giant grape.
“It’s by the far the biggest request I’ve ever had, it’s at least 80% of my comments,” he said.
“I can’t do it and it’s completely impossible but it’s become a bit of a meme within the community.”
Mr Ross also said giant spring rolls, samosas and sushi are among other popular requests he hopes to fulfil, although he feels “a big sushi would be kind of disgusting with a whole raw salmon”.
For a teaser of things yet to come, Mr Ross hopes to create giant versions of mozzarella sticks and a doughnut.
“I don’t know if my boss will read this but I would definitely like to do this full time,” he said.
“I want to do some long-form stuff on YouTube and hopefully a cookbook soon too.”
