In this FRONTPAGE story from Neu York, the foodie turned runway model wants you to get excited about eating plants.
I’ve seen Pierce Abernathy’s face hundreds of times. In Instagram Reels, teaching his audience how to shell fava beans and slow roast sungold tomatoes. I’ve seen it oiled up and floating in a pool for Gucci’s most recent summer campaign. I’ve seen it tucked away in crowds of Milanese and Parisian partygoers captured in recap galleries. And when I flipped through the pages of Bon Appétit last month, not only did I see his face but also his fabulous summer recipes, and his 1991 Toyota truck. And I’m not alone. Abernathy has over 375k followers on Instagram, and 3.2mm likes on TikTok. Commenters called his recent Bon Appétit video “a breath of fresh air.”
He’s everywhere, and adored by everyone from my friend’s mom in Pasadena to the event planners of Paris Fashion Week parties.
But today, I’m seeing the real Abernathy, the one who’s 29-years-old; he’s flying across Brooklyn’s Washington Avenue on his bike, happily waving at me as he pulls up to Tom’s Restaurant.
Tuna melt on rye with french fries for him. BLT for me. Blueberry pancake for the table.
The differentiator of Abernathy’s star power has always been his ability to translate all five senses into simple, mouth-watering recipe videos shot with the intention to be viewed – and shared – on your phone. Yes, he has a formal education in film. After studying at Boston University, he moved to New York to run video departments at subsidiaries of Vice and BuzzFeed. He took up an internship at a restaurant while working for BuzzFeed Tasty, and everything changed.
“The passion for food started outweighing the passion for video,” he told me, removing a toothpick from the tuna melt. “As a video producer, you’re not only making the videos, you’re developing recipes. You’re shooting them, you’re testing them, you’re editing them. But I think because of that, I started cooking a ton at home. I was doing dinner parties, and my friends would have bigger parties or pop-ups and I would have a little stall and make food there. And it got to the point where I was like, ‘Do I maybe want to work in a restaurant or open a restaurant someday?’ I reached out to a bunch of chef owners. Jonah Miller at Huertas was one of them, who let me come in after work at Buzzfeed, and I would cut onions or peel carrots and eventually maybe make a salad on the line.”
For many internet stars, fame is unexpected and comes on fast. Just one or two posts can change the trajectory of a career. Abernathy knew the moment everything was about to change for him. “It was right when Reels had launched,” in March of 2021. “I was one of the first food people, I think, doing it. Every week I was growing 5-10k followers.” That’s a lot. Just a few months later, his recipe posts were getting hundreds of comments, tens of thousands of views, and by May of 2021 he’d quit his job and posted a life update on Instagram: “I could have never imagined making a silly video of baba ganoush would turn into this. Being able to pursue something on my own, that I am passionate about, has always been a dream of mine…I’m still trying to figure out exactly what that means — and where I want to go with it — but none of it could be possible if it weren’t for the people who have followed along the past couple of months.”
What happened next was close to a fairytale.
Food media likes to fit men into archetypes. Brad Leone was the rugged, wild cream that rose to the top of Conde Nast’s video department and could keep your family alive in the woods for three weeks. Matty Matheson was the vibe king, whose hands were as skilled as they were tatted up, his voice as loud as his flavors. But Abernathy brought something softer to the table — silky hair, professorial glasses, caramelized onion ASMR, and the ability to get a fit off. For the fashion world, it was love at first sight. Abernathy’s star shot into the stratosphere when he walked in Gucci’s Love Parade. “That was insane,” he told me. “I was like, “What am I doing here? Why is Jared Leto looking at me as I’m getting my makeup done? Why is Macaulay Culkin hitting his Juul over here, like right next to me?”
Walking with Gucci put Abernathy at the center of the fashion world, which gave him and his team access to new job opportunities, a hell of a lot of respect from magazines, and his orientation in the world of public figures. “Now, I want to be able to be seen not as a model in that world, but as talent, and continuing to be like, ‘Okay, one of these big brands wants to do an event, let’s go, but we’re going to do it our way.’ I’m going to do it my way. We’re going to go to Italy, I’m going to find farmers in Italy. I’m going to source native plants. I want to spend a week beforehand connecting with people.”
Admittedly, doing things “his way” — food focused, thoughtful; in respect of the planet that all 8-billion of us inhabit — is not necessarily what his fans are after. To prove the point, I grab my phone that’s been sitting between us, recording this interview, and swipe through Tweets about him:
Pierce Abernathy, if you see this, let's fuck.
Pierce Abernathy is the sluttiest man alive. We can all learn a little bit from him.
Pierce Abernathy is a sex symbol.
I think we can all agree that Pierce Abernathy. Period.
Pierce Abernathy is the most beautiful boy I've ever seen.
I would lie about being vegetarian to Pierce Abernathy.
Pierce Abernathy is the love of my life.
“I can keep going,” I told him. “I'm curious how those make you feel.”
“I don’t have Twitter,” says Abernathy. The pancake is now on the table, his face is turning red.
“I would lie if I say that I don’t see similar messages on Instagram,” he says. “It’s not lost on me that I operate in a narcissistic world. Initially when I was starting cooking I was like, ‘I’m never going to post videos. I need to pay my dues through kitchens and work my way up that way.’ And then I think the pandemic hit, and all these chefs were out of jobs and making these videos… I don’t know how I feel about it. I try not to overthink. I want to get people as excited as I feel when I’m at the farmer’s market or when I eat a bite of something that I just made.”
Everyone loves Pierce. Fellow Gorgeous Person on Cooking TikTok Turned Fashion Darling, Gabbriette, is often liking his videos. Producer Benny Blanco took time out of the studio with SZA to cook crab dip with him. A recent slew of comments on Abernathy’s TikTok read “Troye sent me here,” – reader, pop star and The Idol actor Troye Sivan recently told Vanity Fair that his celebrity crush is Pierce. “I’d love to cook for him!” Pierce told me when I asked what he thought about that.
Where does Abernathy look for mentorship? Model/chef/entertainer/sustainability-advocate/influencer is a job title that not many can claim. And not many have. How can he explain his income to his accountant? “It’s tough because I think, one, I am trying to grow, and two, naturally I’m in a space that not a lot of people have been in,” he tells me. “It’s scary because I’m this person who has, not analysis paralysis, but career FOMO. I want to do all these things. I want to touch everything.” In short, he looks to different people for different things: his dad, who knows business, friends, who’ve started business recently, and when he needs to, he seeks out the right person to answer a particular question.
Basically, “I talk with friends,” he says. Some of which also happen to be part of the eco-focused collective Abernathy works with called Aerthship — “an eco-art collective, a group of designers, artists, cooks, strategists, musicians, all with the theme of talking about the Earth.” The collective was founded by Tin Mai, who previously worked as a creative director, and who Abernathy considers a business partner. “Outside of Aerthship, he helps consult with me and we bounce ideas off one another,” Abernathy tells me. Together, the collective has worked with brands from Arcteryx to Gucci and Smallhold Mushrooms on events.
“I’m not someone who is super preachy. I’m definitely operating in imperfect sustainability. But I think there’s a lot of things that we can do to make people a little more conscious. We try to create experiences to do that; to make them think a little bit differently around their relationship with the Earth.”
This past spring, Aerthship hosted a seven-event series aptly called the Pierce Spring Tour. The sold-out events happened at Rhodora (the zero-waste wine bar), Snow Peak (the cult outdoor brand), and different farms across Brooklyn. Friends who went to the event at Rhodora said the line was around the block, including fan girls who weren’t old enough to drink at the wine bar, but still wanted to meet their internet crush. “Our collaboration was one of our easiest and busiest pop-ups to date,” Henry Rich, the owner of Brooklyn wine bar Rhodora told me. “His sourcing practices were particularly on point, he cared and was deeply involved with the farm selection and they worked with old friends and partners of ours at Brooklyn Grange rooftop farms a few blocks away.”
These events allow Abernathy to get off his phone, and get in front of the largest audience possible. “My main goal is to get people more excited about eating plants. I don’t want to be hyperfocused or niche or hyper art. As much as my life revolves around my phone, cooking itself is the one thing that feels grounding to me, where I ultimately have to be very present. And I’m pushing people to do that as well.”
If Abernathy is aware of the expiration date his internet fame has stamped on him, he doesn’t show it. He’s introspective and calm; aware, certainly, of what his fans think about him, even if he doesn’t have Twitter, and what this variety of adoration means for any venture he chooses to pursue. It’s a balancing act, but one that Abernathy seems poised to pull off. Poised, but not pushy.
“I’m in no hurry,” he tells me. By now, the pancake is half eaten and the fries are getting cold; the check arrives moments later. “There was initially this rush to be the biggest or heard by the most people. And now, it’s like, ‘Let’s be a little more thoughtful. Find the right team, build a loyal community that gets it, and slowly get to the point where we can keep doing bigger things — host our own music festival, have a show, make a product.’”
On my walk home I scroll through photos on Pierce’s Instagram to connect the dots between spring vegetables he’d been gushing over and recent recipes. I tapped on a photo of him in a J. Crew editorial and scrolled through the comments. One follower wrote, “Man, I followed you for a while, starting off with your dips. Love that it opened up a new platform you 🙌🔥.”
