Food Theory Finale: MatPat’s Last Bite

So, this is it.

It's the final episode of Food Theory, my friends.

I'm sad, you know,

because this has been a channel

that's been really personal for me.

Steph and I cooking in the kitchen for the last four years.

There were so many awesome memes,

like, stuff the cream in me,

and eating a Christmas tree and a hot sauce.

I just can't believe it.

I know, Santi, I know, it's sad.

I'm sad to be leaving.

I'm excited for you, but this is,

it's a bittersweet moment, you know?

Wait, what?

No, no, no, no, no, no.

I'm pumped that you're leaving.

I get to be host of Food Theory?

Yeah, that's great.

No, no, I just can't believe that you're gonna be gone,

and I'm never gonna redeem myself for that stupid cake.

Floam, nightmares forever.

Wait, so, hold on.

It's my final episode,

and you're just focused on your prime cake episode?

Yeah, obviously.

I mean, if it means that much to you,

you could make me a goodbye cake.

I can.

Sure, I guess.

I can have a redemption arc?

I mean, it is my final episode,

but yeah, I guess you could make it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever, that's fine.

Wait right here.

I got an idea.

All right.

Oh, God, what have I done?

I'm gonna regret this.

Hello, internet.

Welcome to Food Theory,

where it's time for my Just Desserts.

You know, when it comes to the four channels,

Food Theory has always held a special place in my heart.

Game theory was the first.

It's seen everything.

Style theory has always been about the team.

It's also the baby of the group.

And film theory, it's film theory.

I'm joking, obviously,

but that is kind of the running meme about it.

But Food Theory, it's always been a bit more personal.

You know, it was born in the middle of COVID.

It's the first that really required me to be on camera.

It's the one that allowed me to connect with Steph

in a completely different way.

I'll also plan off my own personal fears

and insecurities in the kitchen and with food.

It's the one where I got to be wackier

and a bit more unhinged from the usual format.

And food, just by its nature, is more personal.

I mean, for proof of that,

all you gotta do is go check out

the Family Recipe episode from two weeks ago,

which is one of my all-time favorite episodes

that we've ever done across any of the channels.

By the way, on that note,

thank you for all your comments on that video.

It's been heartwarming to read all those stories.

If there's ever been proof that the comments

can still be a place that's positive and uplifting,

that one video right there, that is it.

I've spent so much time down there

just scrolling and reading with a smile on my face.

It's been really beautiful, so thank you.

Thank you for sharing.

Anyway, back to the point.

Knowing how special of a channel this has been,

what better way to close out my time

and transition over to the new host, Santi,

than an episode dedicated to both of us?

A celebratory cake for me, a redemption cake for him.

You see, Santi's had a bit of a prime-sized chip

on his shoulder from his last go-around

trying to bake on this channel.

Santi, can you show the camera

kind of what's happening in this bowl?

No.

I think it would be really fun and exciting if you did.

You know what, I hate you all.

So, it only felt right to give him a second chance

at the validation that he's been wanting so badly.

I'm ready, Matt.

Sure you are, Santi.

So, that, my friends, is the challenge today.

For Santi to make a finale cake.

A cake that takes the best elements

from the past four years of episodes

and merges them together into one perfect bite.

The ultimate food theory cake

that embodies everything that this channel stands for.

Well, everything except for the split icing.

Ha, ha, very funny.

Hey, I just wanted to make sure I clarified.

Make sure we're all working on the same page here.

So, how you plan on delivering us

this one perfect bite, Santi?

Well, I figured I'd bring in a couple of members

of Team Theorist, ask them for their favorite episode,

and then use those as the key ingredients for this cake.

If I may borrow a phrase from John Cena,

are you sure about that?

What do you mean?

I'm just saying, they're not gonna make it easy on ya.

In fact, I'd expect them to outright troll.

Yes, hi, hello, it is I, head editor Dan.

I love that you always feel the need to clarify that.

You guys keep putting it in the script.

I'm just reading the lines, Matt.

So, what's your favorite episode of Food Theory?

Well, that's easy.

It has to be the Mountain Dew pizza episode.

Rarely has there been a pizza

that has actively made you want to brush your teeth

after consuming it.

This is gonna be really healthy.

You're gonna wanna add this

to all of your hot summer body diets.

Is that because it was one

of the first ridiculous cooking episodes?

No.

Was it because that episode

has the highest volume of puns per minute?

It most definitely was not.

Oh, I know it wasn't because of the camera work.

That whole episode looked like we rubbed Vaseline

over the lens.

If you must know, it's because that was the first episode

I got to voice, and it gave me the chance

to shade you in post the entire time.

Wait, who are you?

This is my show.

It's me, Head Editor Dan.

You hired me.

He then added some food coloring

to really give it that green pop it deserves,

is what he wants me to say, but I know the truth.

I see all the footage, Matt,

and I know what really happened.

He forgot to mix in the gel food coloring,

and they had to scramble to try to put it back in.

Here's the before, here's the after.

Look, we're good editors, but we can't fix every mistake.

Also, never say fix it in post,

or I will come directly for you.

Oh my gosh, you are so right.

Yeah, I actually think that might've been

the first episode that anyone outside of me got to voice.

Must've just blocked that one out of my mind,

or maybe I was just delirious.

Again, I was very sick for that episode.

I mean, in total, I think there's been like, what?

Four episodes across the 2,000 videos we've done?

No pressure there, Santi.

You do realize Mountain Dew is a terrible cake ingredient?

Yes, yes I do.

Good luck.

As I was saying before, are they all gonna be like this?

Oh no, not all of them, just most.

Next up, it's Kai, our new social media manager.

Kai, what's your favorite episode of Food Theory?

My favorite would probably have to be

the Christmas tree episodes.

You've got to be kidding me.

Welcome to the job, bucko.

I just said you had to make a cake.

I didn't say that you also had to let other people

choose the ingredients for you.

You did that one for yourself.

I'm sorry, Kai, please continue.

Thanks.

Overall, it was just a solid narrative arc.

Watching the evolution from the first year with you and stuff

just munching on the bark.

Yep, it's tree, it's me eating a tree.

My saliva is just getting sucked right into this stuff.

Smells like Christmas.

Oh, it's so good.

It's all so delicious.

To watching you make cookies out of them

and pranking Steph.

It's literal sawdust.

I mean, it's...

What?

How much sawdust is in here?

30% by weight.

And then finally getting to something

that was actually edible and getting to be a part of that,

that was nice.

You know it's not that bad.

Wow.

We're eating pine!

You do realize who created those recipes, right?

It was me.

Cool.

Well, bye.

Thanks, Kai.

Next up, Amy.

Amy, what's your favorite episode of Food Theory?

Santi's gathering ingredients for a grand finale cake.

Hmm, favorite episode.

I think it has to be Panera Bread Gloves

because it brings together my two favorite things

in the world, fashion and carbs.

Honestly, I love them both so much.

They're perfect together

and they're perfect for this episode.

Bread?

Bread is perfect for the cake episode?

Yes, it is bread.

It is cakes.

They're the same kind of thing.

One just has fashion sense.

Is it too late to quit?

Yes, yes it is.

Thanks, Amy.

Hey, Ash.

Hey.

What's your favorite episode of Food Theory and why?

Ooh, okay, my favorite episode

is actually kind of a personal one to me.

I really like the Oreo episode.

Oh, thank goodness.

Finally, a normal cake ingredient.

Uh, is he okay?

Yeah, he's fine.

You know how our episodes are designed

to teach people stuff?

Yeah?

Well, Santi's learning a lot today.

Tell me about Oreos.

All right then.

Well, one, I was just really proud of the work I did

and putting that whole shoot together.

But also, man, did it serve some absolutely incredible memes.

Like, oh, look at that thick layer of cream in there.

I want that thickness inside my...

Nope, don't say that.

I should not have said that.

It's hot.

I'll give it that.

Oh yeah, you can see it melting.

My poor fingies.

It's hot on my fingies.

Set it on a plate.

Set it on the plate, they say.

Don't burn your fingeries, they say.

Just blew it off, Jason.

I know my saliva is heavy.

I've got the heaviest saliva in the business.

I'm so sorry.

My good dude, you were so questionable.

Continuing around the office,

Lee gave us the Diet Coke taste test

because he's also addicted to that sweet, sweet nectar.

Josiah gave us Prime Exposed

and Tom added the TikTok favorite, pink sauce.

I hate you, Tom.

Okay, it could have been a lot worse.

Just feel lucky no one said

the Kentucky Fried Chicken episode

or the Cabbage Soup episode.

But what about you, Santi?

I'm curious.

What's your favorite?

You're the one taking over the channel after all.

I mean, I'm not doing myself any favors with this one,

but it's actually the fries episode.

Never Order McDonald's Medium Fries,

I think is the official title.

It was one of the first on the channel.

Actually, it was the first.

I just liked the science of it all

and thought it did a good job

of showing what this channel is all about, you know?

In general, the fry episodes tend to be really fun.

Sprite and fries, another personal favorite.

So you've got yourself Mountain Dew,

Diet Coke, bread, spruce, Oreos,

pink sauce, and french fries.

That enough ingredient inspiration for you?

I feel like I should quit while I'm behind.

You think you can find a way to fit it all into a cake?

Eh, I have some ideas.

Well, with everyone's favorite episodes compiled,

it's time for me and Steph

to head to the kitchen one final time.

At least one final time on camera for content.

It's not like I'm never gonna eat again.

We were there to see how Santi might try

to fit all of this into something

even slightly resembling a cake.

And as it so often does,

things immediately got off the rails.

Who do you define for Steph and I

who are not in the bro community?

We're not bro dudes, as it were.

And so, can you explain the dap?

Yeah, if I were to get dapped up, what would I do?

For context, Santi had called Justin to get dapped up

and we were intellectually curious

about what this mating technique was.

Like researchers observing gorillas out in the wild.

It's in the hand motion.

You look like you're doing a little Edelweiss.

If you're a bro, you're too cool for a handshake, right?

Handshake, you go in firm, up, down, release.

That's how you do it.

That is the hope, yeah.

Yes, there, boom.

Yeah.

Dap it.

Dap it.

I get very intimidated by hand-to-hand interactions

that are not that.

I don't read people all that well

and so I can't just like flow with it.

You have to remember, cool peaks in high school, right?

So you have to think about it

like you're the kid in the back of the class.

You're not trying hard.

You don't want to like go in

with a lot of emphasis or anything.

You just like, you just want to go, just cup it.

You want to get the clap and you could do that,

but you could just do that.

And like, you just have to be relaxed with it.

Like you want to, you want to get a good clap.

Okay.

Nope, see, you're going to go from here, from here

and we're going to clap like that.

And then just that, that's it.

All right, ready?

So just relax.

There you go.

Wow. Okay.

Well, you, you exploded it, but that was a good clap.

I really try to avoid like physical contact

with young children entirely.

I do too.

That's not really what I'm going in for.

But if you're driving around

and a kid just kicks a sweet, gnarly tray,

you're like, hey, dap him up.

I honestly can't tell if he's being ironic or not.

Is this a bit?

I don't get it.

Regardless, we were all set with the ingredients.

It was time to get cooking,

but not before one final sick burn from Steph.

We're going to take all of that

and mash it into a monstrosity

that we will call a cake.

You've called a lot of things cake in the past, right?

And you called it even more things calzone

and none of them were right.

You know what?

You're lucky I didn't put ricotta in this cake.

I was this close to doing it.

It would have made it closer to a calzone

than anything you've made before.

Oh, she got you there.

Yeah, actually.

That was a good burn.

Yeah, Steph, hit me up with that,

hit me up with that dap, girl.

Hit me up with that.

Oh, you got to practice handshake.

Got it.

See, now this episode's never going to see the light of day.

So how did Santi expect to work

all of these insane ingredients into one tasty,

or if not tasty, at least edible bite?

Well, Mountain Dew and Diet Coke

were set to be the sponge layers.

Santi insisted on another round

of trying to make frosting out of prime.

And then there were the croutons.

Amy's favorite episode was the bread gloves.

So we're going to take the croutons

and we're going to pulverize them

into a little bit of a dust.

Man, nothing says delicious cake

quite like salad croutons.

It's actually really interesting

because you have the airiness of the cake.

You know what?

You'll see.

You will see. You'll all see.

I love it when a cake is described as interesting.

From the guy who also says that he doesn't like cake.

All right, Dapper.

What do we got going on?

I'm going to have you both pour in the respective fluids

and we're going to pour them into the cake molds.

It's pillowy and cloud-like, actually.

It's very fluffy.

Got lots of air in there.

It's so fluffy.

So the science behind this is actually really cool.

Instead of baking soda and baking powder,

our leavening agents are the sodas.

In using the sodas,

the carbon dioxide that's released

creates those similar air bubbles

and causes the cake to rise.

Plus, we get to incorporate the flavors

of the Mountain Dew and the Diet Coke.

It's honestly all super cool.

With the sponges in the oven,

Santi encouraged us to get some of our aggression out

on the croutons.

Oh my God!

What can I say?

Between FNAF lore and hot wings,

I guess I have some pent-up rage from 13 years on YouTube.

I meant like, take the bag and smash it.

Oh, you are, that was manly.

I like that.

Yeah, Dapper, Dapper bro.

Yeah, there you go.

Dapper bro, Dapper bro.

What is this last part?

There you go.

Yeah, you're like, ah, ah, ah, ah.

Wow, you are wildly efficient.

I am very pro-therapy.

I am also very pro-punching croutons really hard.

With the croutons all mashed

and the Fredbear trauma all processed,

it was on to the prime frosting.

It's like strawberry ice cream.

I was gonna say it does look like strawberry ice cream.

Oh, very much so.

How's it taste?

Mm, very thick.

So sweet.

Ooh, very sweet.

Ooh, very sweet on the front end,

very sour on the back end.

Yeah.

Very interesting.

It's gonna go very well with something else.

Huh, interesting.

I am so optimistic about how this is gonna go.

Let's go see.

Anyway, that was my own private moment.

At this point, Steph and I were dismissed from the kitchen

so Sante could surprise us with the final reveal.

A few hours later, it was time.

How would you like this to be?

Is there a drum roll?

Should I lift?

How would you envision this?

I'll lift it for you.

I'll lift it for you.

Was this like a small laundry basket?

Where did this thing come from?

No cloche, no nothing?

It's for my undergarments, but.

You know, hold up.

It's his boxer basket.

Here.

Literally on our cake.

Hold up, I'm gonna save you on this one, okay?

Yes.

This is the last time I can do this for you.

Okay.

He chose this in commemoration

of us cooking in a dryer episode.

Santi, that was brilliant.

Wow, Santi.

Yes.

I'm so glad you got that in there. Way to go.

Dap over that one.

There we go.

Dap up here.

Oh, dap.

We forgot in the course of what is definitely the same day

how to dap up.

Yeah, here, dap it, dap it, bro.

Why do you hit my wrist?

Like, you miss my hand every time.

And that's how you dap.

That was better.

We couldn't get a smoke machine,

so sorry for the lack of presentation, but.

So.

That's awesome, actually.

This is really pretty.

Okay, so what happened here,

what had happened was.

It's french fries.

Yes.

It's fries.

If you look at it from above,

which we have that shot,

it is the food theory ring.

Oh, oh, that's the food theory,

that's the quadrant.

That's the quadrant.

I get it.

So, that was supposed to be that.

I thought it was a random yellow blob.

I thought so too.

I thought it was like someone peed on the cake.

I thought so too.

Well, there goes my art.

I'm like, we've done a lot of weird episodes, Santi,

but we haven't done like,

can I drink my own urine?

That's more of a Good Mythical Morning style episode.

Well, I mean, you were,

we were talking about tears

and I was saying bodily fluids.

No, this.

Easy to confuse what comes out of your eyes

with what comes out of other parts of your body.

Both salty, I guess.

I don't know.

The yellow pee stain notwithstanding,

we were a far cry from prim cake.

Even down to these cute little

crinkle cut cake fries on top.

Such a cool detail.

So, with everything ready,

it was finally time for my last chance

to stab something on the show.

Ready?

Can I stab the cake?

Yeah!

Oh, that was satisfying.

That was good.

Ooh, sliced right down the middle of that Oreo.

Right down in the middle of an Oreo.

Right through that double stuff.

So, what we should see here,

hopefully,

is a nice-

Is that you that I just heard swallow really hard?

It's like Santi in one moment

just went through the entirety of puberty.

What we should see here, hopefully,

it's the five stages of grief that you're hearing there.

This is my opportunity to do it.

Ooh, that looks so good!

If any regular person were to see this,

they would probably say,

wow, what a delicious pistachio and chocolate cake.

But nope, this is food theory.

That is Mountain Dew and Diet Coke

mixed with Prime, Spruce, and Crouton.

Yum, yum.

You can't deny that it actually looks great, though.

But obviously, the big question here is how it tastes,

which is why it was time to get everyone

on the team in the kitchen

ready to taste for the moment of truth.

It's very chocolatey, Diet Coke-y, and rosemary-y.

Interesting.

All right, everyone.

Happy next chapter of food theory.

Here we go.

Food theory, bite!

After an awkward pause

as everyone chewed and processed their feelings,

the results were in.

Very thick.

It's dense.

It's fudgy.

And they were mixed.

Acceptable.

Oh.

I got some crunch in mine.

Oh, yeah.

Was there supposed to be crunch?

Do you not see the Oreos on top?

Gosh.

I ate the inside.

No, I think you found the Crouton.

Yeah, I was gonna say, what about the Crouton?

Yeah, you found the Crouton.

There's Crouton in there.

So the Croutons are crushed in the middle

for a little bit of texture, a little bit of flavor.

You're saying the weird uncanniness

of the crunch in the cake was calculated?

Yeah.

That's all I needed to know.

We'll be light breadcrumbs, okay?

Where was the ranch?

In the pantry where it belongs.

Okay, okay.

You know what, Santi?

I really like it.

I like it.

I think it's pretty great.

So is the cake definitely an improvement over prim cake?

I feel it fair to say

that Santi got some level of redemption.

But again, the assignment was to capture food theory

in a single bite.

And for that, it absolutely passed with flying colors.

You know what?

I think that this cake is a perfect representation

of the last four years of food theory episodes.

It's not the tastiest cake I've ever had.

It's not the most precise cake I've ever had.

It's a little bit messy.

It's a little bit homespun.

There's a lot of sugar involved.

A lot of sugar involved.

A lot of weird flavors thrown in there.

If I were to pick a cake

to perfectly encapsulate everything

that we've done here on our time, this is a good one.

Thanks, Santi.

I'll take that.

I'm a kid who grew up scared of food.

Home cooking for me was Burger King and Pizza Hut.

When I started this channel,

I could make popcorn on a stove and the occasional pizza.

For crying out loud,

my healthy food advice was to not order

a medium fry at McDonald's.

This wasn't ever about being the best chef

or giving you the perfect recipe for fine dining.

It was about this.

It was about curiosity and exploration through food

that might lead us down some pretty weird and awkward paths.

You guys, talk between you.

What is this?