
Some of you know me as the devourer of worlds, the great beast waiting to break free from R’lyeh and reduce all living things to slime. Still others of you will recognize me from my guest appearances on The Great British Baking Show where I first wowed the judges with an orange sponge cake and told Noel Fielding his shirts were even more of an abomination than Yog-Sothoth.
You may think that being a primordial being spawned in a time before time, capable of commanding the very forces of the universe and bound only by the Elder Gods, gave me a distinct advantage in pursuing a successful career as a chef and restaurateur. You may think it was easy for me to found a restaurant chain offering good, popular fare and which I hope will eventually spawn offspring that will break forth from the cesspool of humanity’s darkest impulses, releasing me from R’lyeh. It may surprise you to learn that, while elemental forces destined me to reduce all things to corruption, it took years of practice before I could make a proper mayonnaise, a technique I’ll share with you in my MasterClass(tm).
In fact many of you may be surprised to learn that, forced by circumstances to put my ultimate goal of destroying all life aside temporarily, I took a job washing dishes at a mom and pop restaurant in Poughkeepsie. After a few times working at the stove, as well as inspiring madness in the fry cook, I found a real passion for cooking. I scraped and saved and occasionally feasted on the souls of society’s outcasts until I had saved enough to go to culinary school.
Even then my path was neither easy nor as certain as the ultimate torment to which I shall someday subject all of humanity. I steadily worked my way up to the position of sous chef of several of New York’s finer restaurants before moving to Paris only to find I had to start all over again. I managed this while reigning in my innate tendencies to instill horror in all living things within a thousand-mile radius.
Finally, after becoming head chef of one of Paris’s oldest restaurants as well as an extremely successful, albeit controversial, appearance on the Food Network’s Chopped where I literally wiped the floor with the competition, I returned to New York. There I opened Big C’s, an ambitious restaurant that was supposed to be based around local, sustainably harvested seasonal meats and produce but affordably priced and fusing influences as wide-ranging as Korean, Middle Eastern, and elemental forces from distant galaxies that were extinguished billions of years ago.
However many of the dishes were savaged by critics who didn’t appreciate putrescence and loathing baked into every entree. It didn’t help that the restaurant itself was the site of an enormous battle between me and Hastur The Unspeakable, as well as an extremely bad health inspection, which I think was unfair, to say the least.
While my lawyers have advised me not to say any more about the latter two incidents, the important thing, and one of the biggest lessons I hope to impart to you, is that I didn’t let these setbacks stop me. I picked myself up again and will one day arise from the depths to sow madness and destruction and offer my own high quality line of frozen meals.
I know many of you are wondering what the secret is to the enslavement and destruction of all conscious beings and extinguishing all light from the universe, as well as making a good risotto. And I will tell you the answer is the same for both: patience, determination, and freshly grated Parmesan.
While nothing is certain in the restaurant business except that it, like all things, will eventually scream in desperate agony as it is consumed by the void, I hope you’ll join me in my MasterClass(tm) where we will work together to make you the best chef you can be before we ultimately tap into unholy powers and unleash a vast ocean of darkness that will subsume all things.
Act now and enter the code “ICHOR” to be entered for a discount on my special home-delivered meals that will make your dinners dreamy and your nights troubled as they slowly poison the landscape, suffusing it with an unnatural glow. You’ll also get my fun and easy recipe for stuffed mushroom caps and, as a special bonus, a glimpse into a billion years of torture that will precede the end of all things.
Everything about this is fantastic and hilarious! Your writing is always so clever. And I agree that Parmesan is good for just about anything, especially sowing delicious death and destruction!
I’m so glad you liked this, but of course I also think the Parmesan helped. Even Cthulhu couldn’t resist one of the world’s finest cheese.
Since I met him years ago, Michael has told countless tales of being a cook in many kitchens, Chris, and much of this blog post sounded familiar to me. Indeed, Michael got out of the restaurant business because of the constant tapping into unholy powers and the unleashing of vast oceans of darkness that subsumed all things. And here I thought he was exaggerating.
I hope Michael got a laugh out of this as well–I thought of him since he’s a cook. Also it’s very funny to me that, of all people, Carl Reiner also tapped into unholy powers in “Professor Peabody’s Last Lecture”, from an episode of Rod Serling’s Night Gallery.