Joshua Weissman

Joshua Weissman has a simple proposition: take something you already eat, make it from scratch, and prove it’s better. That’s the “But Better” series in one sentence. The “But Cheaper” follow-on takes the same logic and applies it to your wallet. Both are brilliant niche definitions — confrontational in the best way, a direct challenge to convenience culture wearing a high-energy grin.

Weissman’s channel launched in 2014 and spent years finding its footing, but the “But Better” format, once locked in, clicked into place with a clarity that most creators spend entire careers searching for. Fast food is the enemy. The home kitchen is the weapon. The creator is the slightly manic chef who will absolutely not let McDonald’s win. The format works because it’s inherently dramatic: there’s a villain (the chain restaurant), a hero (Weissman, apron on, camera rolling), and a verdict delivered with the energy of a courtroom reveal.

The technical skills on display are genuine. Weissman can cook. The recipes are ambitious — croissants from scratch, ramen from three-day broth, fast food chicken sandwiches reconstructed from first principles — and the instructions are clear enough to follow if you have the patience. This isn’t a channel that uses cooking as a backdrop for personality; the cooking itself carries real weight. The problem is that the personality occasionally overwhelms it.

Weissman refined an existing format and executed it with personality, but he didn’t invent the wheel. He put better tyres on it.

At his best, Weissman’s high-energy delivery is infectious: the exaggerated reactions, the dramatic taste-test moments, the theatrical contempt for processed food. At his worst, it tips from infectious into exhausting — a performance pitched at an algorithm rather than an audience, enthusiasm without object, volume mistaken for substance. The gap between best and worst Weissman is wider than most channels at his level. Babish’s worst video is still competently made. Weissman’s worst video makes you feel like you’re watching someone try too hard for a camera that doesn’t care.

The consistency score tells the story of a creator who has maintained a punishing upload schedule without meaningfully dropping off — which is genuinely impressive at nearly a decade in — but who hasn’t always maintained the quality ceiling that justified the audience’s initial investment. Weekly uploads at his scale demand a production machine, and the machine occasionally shows its gears.

The replay value question is where the model reveals its structural ceiling. Weissman’s videos are instruction first, entertainment second — you return to them when you’re actually making the recipe. That generates real replay, but it’s bounded replay. You’ll watch the smash burger episode twice: once to decide you want to make it, once while you’re making it. Then you’re done. Compare that to a channel where entertainment is primary — where you’ll rewatch something three times simply because it’s good — and the ceiling becomes visible. The format’s utility is also its limitation.

His community is built on energy: a younger, more meme-driven audience that engages through humour, challenges, and collective contempt for big fast food. It’s a real community, but it’s a volatile one. Meme energy is weather-dependent. The comment sections don’t have the durability of channels built on affection or intellectual curiosity — they’re fun when they’re up, and they drift when the creator’s energy dips.

None of this is a dismissal. Weissman is in the Top 50 because he earned it. The “But Better” format is a genuine niche invention within the enormous cooking vertical — not the most original thing on YouTube, but a sharp iteration on an existing form, executed with personality and technical skill that most competitors couldn’t match. He entered the Top 50 at #35 following the Issue #009 Boss Fight against Binging with Babish, where he scored 81 against Babish’s 85 — a loss only because the opponent invented a format from nothing, which remains the harder thing to do.

Against most channels in the cooking vertical, Weissman wins. Against Babish specifically, he loses on the X-Factor alone — not on effort, not on output volume, not on technical skill, but on the fundamental question of whether you invented your room or refinished someone else’s. He refinished it beautifully. The furniture is excellent. He just didn’t build the house.

The verdict is EXCELLENT and the qualifier is honest: this is a channel operated by someone who genuinely knows what he’s doing, in a format he understands completely, at a level of consistency that most creators don’t sustain. The ceiling just belongs to the format, not the creator. Joshua Weissman is very good at making things better. The category sits at the intersection of Binging with Babish and Townsends — the cooking vertical’s range in miniature — and Weissman plants his flag squarely in the middle of it: more entertaining than instruction, more instructional than entertainment, and excellent at both. For the full matchup against Babish, see the canonical Boss Fight.