{"id":292069,"date":"2025-07-26T01:44:52","date_gmt":"2025-07-26T01:44:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/292069\/"},"modified":"2025-07-26T01:44:52","modified_gmt":"2025-07-26T01:44:52","slug":"how-the-topjaw-team-became-britains-most-influential-foodies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/292069\/","title":{"rendered":"How the Topjaw team became Britain\u2019s most influential foodies"},"content":{"rendered":"

Is Topjaw the most powerful force in food right now? Oh, I don\u2019t even know why I\u2019m asking. Yes, it is. The two-man social media sensation with 400,000 and rising YouTube<\/a> subscribers and 830,000 followers on Instagram<\/a> has the ability to get a restaurant booked out for years and years to come. It can turn chefs into superstars and make icons of individual dishes. It could presumably destroy restaurants, chefs, individual dishes too, if it chose. But destruction is categorically not Topjaw\u2019s style<\/a>. Ninety-second video interviews with everyone from Idris Elba to Marcus Wareing to Mary Berry, most of which seem to start with the question, \u201cBest restaurant in [insert name of relevant city here]?\u201d, each of which clocks up tens of thousands of views and guarantees the fortunes of anyone featured \u2014 that\u2019s Topjaw\u2019s style.<\/p>\n

Do you feel powerful, I ask Jesse Burgess, Topjaw\u2019s presenter, and Will Warr, its videographer.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo,\u201d Burgess says. \u201cNot really.\u201d<\/p>\n

Do you recognise it as power, though?<\/p>\n

\u201cI mean\u2026 yeah? When we get restaurants saying, \u2018Thanks for that, guys,\u2019 and one of the first bits of really lovely genuine recognition we got was a little wine bar in Paris \u2014 Terra Bar \u00e0 Vins, amazing food, punches above its weight \u2014 emailing us three years after that YouTube video saying, \u2018Guys, by the way, still every day there are people coming in off your video.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s cool,\u201d Warr says.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd we did this video on Canal [in Westbourne Park, west London] this weekend. Dom Hamdy, brilliant restaurateur, same age as us, he opened this one; he\u2019s got a Midas touch. So we did it and it went out. He texted me a few days afterwards saying, \u2018Eight hundred bookings in 24 hours.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n

\u2022 Read more restaurant reviews and recipes from our food experts<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n

And that\u2019s a lovely thing to do for someone.<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah,\u201d Burgess continues. \u201cNot powerful. Just lovely.\u201d<\/p>\n

We\u2019re sitting in Gymkhana<\/a>, the Michelin-starred Indian restaurant and a longstanding favourite of Warr and Burgess, who\u2019ve featured it often, most recently \u201cas voted for by chefs: the No 1 curry in London<\/a>\u201d. There\u2019s an epic spread of delectable food in front of us. We\u2019re picking at it, taking it in turns to chew, swallow, speak.<\/p>\n

Warr, 35, and Burgess, 33, are tall, good-looking, affable, solicitous and home counties posh, unthreateningly appealing on every level. The sort of men who genuinely do believe it\u2019s better to be lovely than powerful. They\u2019re best friends; good foils for one another. Burgess is warm and gossipy, a former model who looks more than a smidge like a young Jude Law \u2014 whom he knows, by the way. \u201cYou know his name is actually Dave?\u201d Burgess says, before reminiscing about teaching maths to Iris Law \u2014 Jude\u2019s now twentysomething daughter with Sadie Frost \u2014 when she was \u201cabout ten\u201d. Burgess had been in a band with Iris\u2019s half-brother, Finlay Kemp; he\u2019s also very good at maths.<\/p>\n

\u201cJesse\u2019s role in Topjaw is, he can do the spreadsheets,\u201d Warr says. Warr himself is quieter, a little more contained, less of a people pleaser. He moonlights as occasional videographer for William and Kate; he made the Princess of Wales\u2019s video<\/a> announcing that her cancer had gone.<\/p>\n

\u201cI love making spreadsheets,\u201d Burgess says. \u201cI love a good VLOOKUP. Do you know what that is?\u201d<\/p>\n

I do not, I say (turns out it\u2019s a tool in spreadsheet programs), but I note how his face has lit up.<\/p>\n

\u201cOh, seriously. It lights him up a lot,\u201d Warr says.<\/p>\n

Right, so: how did two nice middle-class boys end up turning the restaurant business on its head with a professional endeavour neither of them can really define? (\u201cIt\u2019s hard when you\u2019re at a wedding or something and someone asks, \u2018What do you do?\u2019 \u201d Burgess says.)<\/p>\n

By accident, by trial and error and with a little luck and a lot of graft, it transpires.<\/p>\n

Neither of them was born a foodie.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Should you swap your cookbook for a TikTok recipe?<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n

Warr grew up on a farm \u201coutside Banbury [Oxfordshire]. A smallholding. I was very lucky. I had a lovely green upbringing.\u201d He wasn\u2019t that bothered about food at all \u2014 he just wanted to make films. Started messing around with a video camera in his early teens although, Burgess tells him, \u201cI\u2019ve got a photo of you when you\u2019re six years old and you have a camera in your hand.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cReally?\u201d Warr says.<\/p>\n

\u201cLike an Early Learning Centre camera, a bit like the one Fred has.\u201d Fred is Warr\u2019s three-year-old son with his wife, Sarah.<\/p>\n

\"NINTCHDBPICT000931535306\"<\/p>\n

Meeting Jamie Oliver<\/p>\n

@TOPJAW\/INSTAGRAM<\/p>\n

Warr studied product development at Loughborough University and worked on the side as a freelance film-maker throughout his degree.<\/p>\n

There was really no chance of you doing anything other than make films, then?<\/p>\n

\u201cStraight out of uni, 100 per cent. Just thoroughly enjoyed creating beautiful films,\u201d Warr says.<\/p>\n

Burgess, meanwhile, grew up in East Anglia in a village called Yelling. He went to a \u201clittle primary school. I was one of nine people in my year.\u201d Food was more in the mix of his childhood, if from an unexpected source. His mother was part of the cabin crew on private jets, \u201cso a Saudi prince would go on and she would have been running around London like a blue-arsed fly trying to find this particular caviar that this guy wanted. She\u2019d bring it onto the plane; he wouldn\u2019t touch it,\u201d so she\u2019d take it home and give it to her family.<\/p>\n

Burgess originally thought he wanted to be an actor. But when he realised how tough that would be to get into, he gave in to another ambition: just to get to London, whatever that required. \u201cI was obsessed with London. I thought it was the coolest place.\u201d Aged 17, while visiting \u201ca sort of a girlfriend, I was on Kings Road waiting for her when someone came up to me and said, \u2018Do you do modelling?\u2019 And I was like, \u2018You\u2019ve got me mixed up with somebody else.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n

You didn\u2019t realise you were handsome?<\/p>\n

\u201cNo, no, no. Modelling was not a consideration.\u201d<\/p>\n

Modelling disagreed. Burgess was promptly signed by Storm, one of the biggest agencies in London \u2014 Kate Moss\u2019s, famously \u2014 which allowed him to move to the city. \u201cModelling was like, \u2018Hey, we can also put you up in this flat in Stockwell,\u2019 and I said, \u2018Hell, yeah.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n

After a few good years, Burgess grew bored by it and ended up employed by Jamie Laing<\/a>, the Made in Chelsea star \u2014 now podcasting magnate \u2014 who, at that point, 12 or so years ago, had just launched his sweets enterprise, Candy Kittens. Laing had been on Storm\u2019s books too.<\/p>\n

By chance, Warr took up a desk in the Candy Kittens office when he first got to London from Loughborough, and so the two men met for the first time.<\/p>\n

Did your eyes meet \u2014 and you realised you could make social media gold?<\/p>\n

They laugh.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo.\u201d<\/p>\n

They did, however, get dispatched by Laing to tour the country together with a video camera. \u201cThe Candy Cruise,\u201d Warr says. \u201cDoing pop-ups in shops and whatever, trying to sell all the Candy Kittens merch.\u201d At this point there were no actual Candy Kittens sweets \u2014 they were still being developed. There was only merchandise, T-shirts etc and a brand identity to build.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was like a university tour,\u201d Burgess says. \u201cWill and I were going to Liverpool together, making a video, and we thought, \u2018This is really fun and we\u2019re quite good at this.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n

The friendship that would become Topjaw was born.<\/p>\n

Then what?<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was when Instagram and social media were starting,\u201d Burgess says. \u201cSo ten years ago \u2014 2014-15 \u2014 when people first had a half-decent camera on their phone. And they\u2019d go to a restaurant, take a picture of it, put it online. That was then getting amplified with this wave of fast, casual restaurants like Byron burgers and Burger & Lobster. Young people doing cool, younger, experiential restaurants.\u201d<\/p>\n

And you two recognised that something was \u2026 stirring in the zeitgeist? Something you could document? Parlay into a massive social media enterprise?<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was just exciting,\u201d Burgess says. \u201cA lot of young people taking a lot of big chances. Joe [Grossman], who started Patty & Bun, he put all his money into one little restaurant that\u2019s eight metres long \u2014 and that was exciting.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 2015, Warr and Burgess started making 20-minute films about this bold new breed of restaurant, digging up the stories behind them and interviewing the people creating them.<\/p>\n

They did not, however, find that they had an instant hit on their hands.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo,\u201d Warr says. \u201c[We were making] these quite niche films in pockets of London. There wasn\u2019t the demographic for it on YouTube back in the day.\u201d<\/p>\n

But that wasn\u2019t the point \u2014 they were having a nice time. \u201cSome guys play golf; we make films about food and drink together,\u201d they\u2019ve said in the past.<\/p>\n

But, you know, the internet\u2019s intriguing and nothing if not potent, so they went for a beer with a person who plays Fifa on YouTube: CapgunTom, who now has 980,000 subscribers. \u201cHe very quickly analysed our content and said, \u2018Hold on. Anyone around the world can tune in and watch my Fifa YouTube, but you have to be quite interested in Bermondsey if you want to watch a \u2018best sandwiches in Bermondsey\u2019 film. Why don\u2019t you try to do more global guides?\u2019 So we decided to go abroad.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 2019, four years after they\u2019d first launched Topjaw, Burgess and Warr took a video camera to Paris.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe called it \u201848 Hours in Paris\u2019, even though we only had 36 hours,\u201d Burgess says. \u201cWe went without a plan; got the Eurostar. We had a note from a chef \u2014 Maxime Alary from Blanchette; he\u2019s from Paris \u2014 and he said, \u2018Go to this bakery that I absolutely love. It\u2019s the best boulangerie in France.\u2019 So that [Du Pain et des Id\u00e9es] was the first stop on our tour. From then on we just went to wherever someone next told us. A local or someone would say, \u2018Oh, go here,\u2019 or, \u2018Go there.\u2019 \u201d They accidentally created a definitive locals\u2019 guide to Parisian food.<\/p>\n

That film became Topjaw\u2019s first breakout viral hit. Warr and Burgess were making another film in Bangkok when \u201cthe Paris film was booting off. It was just such an exciting moment,\u201d Warr says.<\/p>\n

How did it feel?<\/p>\n

\u201cNuts, because finally it was, \u2018This is what it\u2019s like,\u2019 \u201d Burgess says. \u201cYou\u2019d refresh it and have another 10-20,000 views and a load of comments: \u2018Thank you YouTube for finally recommending something good.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n

Yet that was still not quite that for Topjaw.<\/p>\n

\"NINTCHDBPICT001010227920\"<\/p>\n

Covid struck. Restaurants and travel shut down at the precise point Burgess and Warr were getting somewhere with their\u2026 side hustle?<\/p>\n

\u201cI wouldn\u2019t even say \u2018hustle\u2019, because it didn\u2019t make any money,\u201d Burgess says. \u201cIt was a \u2018side passion project\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another thing that happened during Covid was that incredibly short-form video content, like Instagram Reels and TikTok, boomed.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat whole dynamic of being on your phone and flicking,\u201d Burgess says, flicking his thumb to illustrate the speed with which those films are consumed, \u201cthat process didn\u2019t really exist pre-2020. We were watching so many reels and shorts but not making them. We turned up our noses a bit because we like making these long 20-minute stories \u2014 but maybe we shouldn\u2019t do that.\u201d<\/p>\n

By the beginning of 2023, Warr and Burgess had reached a \u201cbit of a crossroads with Topjaw\u201d, Burgess says, \u201cwhere it wasn\u2019t really making any money. We thought, \u2018OK, we either pack this in because life\u2019s getting busy \u2014 Will was starting a family \u2014 or we pack everything else in and really go full-on Topjaw.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n

They decided to go full-on Topjaw.<\/p>\n

They started out with \u201cabout \u00a370,000\u201d in a bank account \u2014 Burgess had been smart by investing his modelling money into properties, doing them up and selling them on \u2014 and \u201cabout 70,000 followers on Instagram\u201d. They took both, along with their new vision of short, sharp video content, and started their revolution. Their first film was with Dom Fernando of Paradise in central London. They didn\u2019t run it by Fernando first. \u201cWe knew him, so we just dropped in. We knocked on his door and said, \u2018Do you fancy just giving us five minutes?\u2019 \u201d Warr says, which Fernando did before \u201cwalking us round Soho, introducing us to other chefs in restaurants: \u2018Hey, can you come out?\u2019 And we caught Diana Alvarez [of Cantabrian Kitchen] on her break outside. It was quite funny \u2014 people were happy at that stage to really speak their minds because they thought, \u2018Well, where\u2019s this gonna go?\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n

And Topjaw began to fly.<\/p>\n

When did they realise they were famous?<\/p>\n

\u201cOh, I mean, occasionally we get stopped even from our original Paris video in 2019,\u201d Burgess says. \u201cBut the frequency has definitely steadily increased. Everyone\u2019s really lovely.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou get the occasional person who runs 100 metres after us to say, \u2018What\u2019s the best restaurant in London?\u2019 Then you see the look on their face as they go, \u2018I have not thought this through.\u2019 But generally, obviously, we\u2019re so happy that someone watches our stuff. I mean, I was with blimming David Beckham<\/a> on Monday.\u201d<\/p>\n

How come?<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was something at Wimbledon. He was lovely. Shook his hand \u2014 softly, \u2019cos he\u2019s got a broken hand. I said, \u2018Oh, have you ever seen any of the Topjaw stuff?\u2019 And he went, \u2018Yeah, I\u2019ve watched loads of it.\u2019 Started talking about ones he really liked. That is crazy. Blimming David Beckham! What an awesome god.\u201d<\/p>\n

Is Becks going to do a Topjaw film?<\/p>\n

\u201cYes. Our teams have connected. We\u2019ll do a couple of fun bits. He loves pubs, so\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

The pub with Becks and Topjaw it is.<\/p>\n

\"NINTCHDBPICT001010227627\"<\/p>\n

Idris Elba has already done one (\u201cHe has an aura,\u201d Burgess says. \u201cA presence, yeah,\u201d Warr says. \u201cHe makes your organs fall out of your arse,\u201d Burgess adds), and Florence Pugh. They did a film with Rishi Sunak<\/a> too, in the dying days of his premiership. But their subscribers responded so badly, they took it down.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe learnt something from that,\u201d Burgess says. \u201cYou get an offer and \u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

Ah. So Sunak came to you?<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah. At first you think, \u2018Oh wow, that is very flattering.\u2019 When we\u2019ve worked for so long on something, then to be recognised by\u2026 Despite what we may think of the person. The offer itself was like, \u2018Holy shit.\u2019 But we will never work with a politician again.\u201d<\/p>\n

I ask if anyone\u2019s turned them down \u2014 restaurateur or celebrity.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe really don\u2019t reach out that much,\u201d Burgess says. \u201cBut one person [we did approach] and were really trying to get was Alison Hammond.\u201d<\/p>\n

Alison Hammond turned you down?<\/p>\n

\u201cToo busy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Success as suddenly acquired as Topjaw\u2019s inevitably inspires tension among certain parties \u2014 particularly those with fortunes that depend on operations like Topjaw\u2019s not undermining their influence and, potentially, revenue streams.<\/p>\n

One very established restaurant critic wrote an extensive article on the phenomenon, one that acknowledged their impact but took care to lampoon their poshness, their eagerness, the money they take from advertisers (which they do \u2014 but selectively, they tell me: \u201cStella Artois, Google\u201d), and their goofy \u201cbro\u201d schtick.<\/p>\n

\u201cAh, you\u2019re never gonna get to the size we are without having people throwing peanuts from the gallery to make them feel better about themselves,\u201d Burgess says. I marvel at his permanent condition of easy-breeziness. Doesn\u2019t that level of joviality ever become exhausting?<\/p>\n

\u201cYes. Sometimes I can be really dead, really tired, but then I\u2019m looking at the lens and I\u2019m fine.\u201d<\/p>\n

I ask them what the ultimate game plan is. Burgess, who is getting married a fortnight after I meet him, is to appear on a new Gordon Ramsay-produced Apple TV+ show called Knife Edge: Chasing Michelin Stars, in which he\u2019ll go behind the scenes in the kitchens of restaurants attempting to win Michelin stars.<\/p>\n

But as far as Topjaw is concerned, \u201cI know it sounds silly, but we sort of want more of the same,\u201d Burgess says.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve only just found our groove after all these years,\u201d Warr says.<\/p>\n

I ask them what \u201cTopjaw\u201d means.<\/p>\n

\u201cGood question,\u201d Burgess says. \u201cWe called it Topjaw before we\u2019d even made our first video.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe can\u2019t really remember why or where we got the name from, but what we do like about it is that j-a-w \u2014 Jesse and Will.\u201d<\/p>\n

I ask them how they don\u2019t get fat.<\/p>\n

\u201cI can\u2019t imagine my internals are in particularly good nick,\u201d Warr says.<\/p>\n

Finally, I ask them the question I have taken, over recent years, to asking all the foodies I interview. I\u2019ve asked Stanley Tucci and I\u2019ve asked Tom Parker Bowles.<\/p>\n

Jesse and Will, tell me: if you had to choose between food and sex for the rest of your lives, which would it be?<\/p>\n

It\u2019s worth noting that both Tucci and Parker Bowles stammered and grimaced and boggled and ultimately refused to answer.<\/p>\n

\u201cFood,\u201d Burgess says without hesitating.<\/p>\n

\u201cOh, food, man,\u201d Warr agrees.<\/p>\n

\u201cI gave you a beat as well. I was like, I\u2019m not gonna say \u2018food\u2019 before you finish saying \u2018sex\u2019,\u201d Burgess says.<\/p>\n

Brilliant, I say. <\/p>\n