About seven to 10 years ago, Troy found himself on a flight from Chicago to San Diego, sitting next to none other than now-YouTube star and restaurateur, Sam the Cooking Guy. A bomb threat had diverted the plane to Phoenix instead. Amidst the chaos and fear, they found themselves calling and texting their loved ones back in San Diego, unsure of what was happening. 

Sam the Cooking Guy is our guest on this week’s Happy Half Hour. Spoiler: He and Troy survived that fateful flight and remain happily trauma-bonded to this day (we get into details of what happened and how it all ended in the episode). 

These days, Sam’s also sitting pretty at 3.7 million YouTube followers as of publish and just opened his latest restaurant, Basta, in Little Italy. The new concept joins his other restaurants including Not Not Tacos, Samburgers, Graze, and Coo Coo’s Nest. In classic Sam style, the food follows only a few rules, resulting in brain-bending, mouth-watering combos like deep-fried pate à choux gnocchi with cacio e pepe aioli. It’s one of the best things we’ve ever popped in our mouths.

Sam shared insights into his journey from being miserable in a corporate biotech job to finding success, fame, and, most importantly, happiness from taking the leap into his cooking and media career. “I was miserable. I knew I needed to find a way to make me happy,” Sam remembers. 

He took a bet on YouTube at the behest of his son who saw the platform’s promise and paired it with his dad’s love for cooking and irreverent personality. “He’s a really talented guy that learned how to cook live on TV and now is actually a great cook,” Troy says, describing Sam’s unique journey of becoming kitchen-fluent live and on-camera, while becoming famous at the same time.

Sam’s YouTube channel, which has now grown to nearly 4 million subscribers, is a testament to his perseverance, creativity, and adaptability. He recalled the grinding early days, which netted him only 30,000 subscribers after seven years. But a shift in approach—shorter, better-produced videos—catapulted his channel into the stratosphere. 

“We started to make things that we imagined our audience would want to see,” Sam explained. This includes making mistakes, which he doesn’t edit out, and evaluating his viewers and playing to what he thinks they’d like to eat and cook. “It’s all part of the process,” he says. 

Part of that now includes several restaurants, as well as a number of successful cookbooks. Sam continues to chug on–his latest cookbook, Sam the Cooking Guy: Between the Buns, showcases his love for comfort food with a twist, which reflects the kind of dishes you can find at his restaurants and in his videos.

We also dove into the local culinary news: A new Japanese fusion spot called Cherryfish is set to open in Pacific Beach this September. Owners Danielle and Carlos Marcos are eager to “contribute to the wave of culinary change in the area.” Meanwhile, chefs Nick Weber and Jacob Jordan are making waves in Oceanside with their Chinese cuisine pop-up, 24 Suns, which has been receiving rave reviews for its seasonal summer menu.