Man cooks baby back ribs in a hotel bathroom

TikTok’s most recent surprise has come in the form of a man giving cooking lessons from his hotel bathroom.

The social media user, @barfly7777, is a self-styled ‘bathroom chef’ and has been showcasing his skills in different videos since last year. In a viral video posted last week, he appears to prepare, cook and eat baby back ribs using nothing but appliances provided by the hotel.

The video, which has garnered 2.5 million views and 134,000 likes on the popular video-sharing platform at the time of writing, starts with the man opening and preparing the meat by the sink.

After taking it out of the packaging, he uses a towel to remove the membrane before seasoning the meat with Char Siu (a Cantonese spice mix).

In a surprising twist, he places the meat on a grill and then covers it with a pillowcase, before placing a hairdryer in the opening and tying up the gap. He then places a thermometer in the meat, while an instruction to “roast for four hours” appears on the screen.

The next part of his seven-hour cooking process is to open up the pillowcase, glaze the meat and “cook” for another three hours while adding a side of jacket potato and corn.

Having ruined one pillowcase and stained the bathroom walls and sink with raw pork, the video ends as a “success”, with the man appearing to enjoy his gourmet meal in bed.

The entertaining video attracted a diverse array of reactions in the comments section, with a mixture of amusement, surprise and confusion.

One person reminded the man that his “room cleaning fee is going to be crazy”, while another commented that “they’re gonna put you on a no fly list for hotels”.

Some were in disbelief, with one person saying that there was “no way he just fully cooked ribs with a hair dryer and a pillow case”. The video’s creator replied that he’s “been bbq’ing 40 years”.

“Give me a constant heat temp and I’ll give you a meal,” he added.

This isn’t the first instance of people using hotel rooms to cook meals in unusual ways, with pandemic-induced quarantines forcing some people to get innovative with cooking methods.

In 2020, a chef from Cornwall managed to cook creme brûlée, tacos and teriyaki salmon using an iron, kettle and coffee maker in his hotel room.