It takes ten years to become an overnight success, they say. At the eight year mark, Topjaw’s Jesse Burgess and Will Warr very nearly tapped out. The pair had been making longish-form food-adjacent YouTube videos since 2015 — things like a 21-minute, three part series on the best burger in London. (“We haven’t exactly moved on,” laughs Will now.) It was going okay. It was going fine. It was even going quite well — which is a terrible way for anything to be going whatsoever.

“And then there came a moment when it was like, right: this has been a side project for so long,” says Jesse now. “Are we going to pack it in because it takes up a lot of time? Or are we going to carry it on — at which point we have to put our all into it. It was one or the other..."

 

Here, Jesse and Will discuss London's best restaurants, birthday celebrations, the problem with hype, and their admiration for the people behind the industry.