Vancouver brothers track one cheap good meal at a time on YouTube

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If you’re looking for tasty cheap eats around Vancouver, the Zsillei brothers have a YouTube channel for you.

It’s called Reelin’ in the Beers and has grown from barely 500 subscribers mere months ago to 5,500 today.

Inspired by Anthony Bourdain’s Parts Unknown and the TV travel series Departures, Owen and Jeremy Zsillei started out reviewing Vancouver bars such as the Lamplighter and Metropole after they reopened with restrictions after COVID-19’s onslaught, as well as takeout from Gringo Taco, one of their go-to eateries.

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Jeremy, now 31 and working in IT, moved to Vancouver seven years ago to study at BCIT. Owen, 25, followed soon after and is a cook at a brew pub.

The don’t make any money from their project, but they’re having fun since they started their YouTube venture four years ago.

“It was such a weird feeling during the COVID lockdown, we thought, ‘We’ve got to document this,’” Jeremy said. “We had no idea how long it was going to be like this for, and we went to Metropole, our favourite bar at the time.”

“We were just bored, I think,” Owen added. “The origin of it was we always wanted to make a travel video, but we were like, ‘Let’s just start making videos here, start honing the craft a little bit.’”

There is indeed, among their YouTube offerings, a Japan series covering a pub-crawl in Tokyo’s Shibuya; seeing if there’s a difference between cheap versus expensive ramen; surviving on nothing but convenience store foods for 24 hours; and things to do in Tokyo at night until the trains start running again at 6 a.m.

Back at home they’ve reviewed Zac-Zac Japanese Curry House, Italian Day on the Drive, Vietnamese joints, dim sum eateries, Burnaby’s Crystal Mall, all while keeping the cost between $5 and $10.

“No McDonalds value menu and no Costco hotdogs,” Jeremy said. “A lot of these lists have a $3 slice of pizza. I hate that s–t. We put the work in, we’re actually finding meals you can get for under $10 in Vancouver.”

Learn about the Sea House on Kingsway, Grab N Go in Yaletown, Bon’s Off Broadway on Nanaimo — just the tip of the iceberg, as Jeremy puts it.

The guys grew up in Cranbrook, and are as Canadian as Fubar or the Trailer Park Boys.

When they moved to Vancouver from their hometown and discovered food options other than Boston Pizza, they were over the moon.

Their mini docs are sprinkled with F-bombs — when some morsel is particularly tasty, say, it’s not just delicious but “effin’ deelish” — and radiate how much fun they have. Because they include copyrighted music, they aren’t allowed to monetize their videos, so it’s a labour of love.

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They’ve been approached about becoming influencers, but declined, leery of becoming shills instead of lighthearted critics.

“Rent is so expensive, it’s so difficult to live here, if you can get really delicious cheap food and it’s only $6.50, that’s something everyone in the city can enjoy,” Jeremy said.

They seem to get on amazingly well and being five years apart in age, you might guess there was no competition while growing up, but you would guess wrong.

“We had beefs growing up,” Owen said. “Our friendship started once I moved here.”

They were sitting at a corner table inside Yaser’s Cafe on Sunset Street in Burnaby, a few minutes drive from their place in East Van. Yaser Ezzat opened the cafe in 1994 and prices aren’t much higher than they were 30 years ago.

Every day there is a new special for $6.50, an always busy hole-in-the-wall that doesn’t even have the restaurant name out front yet appeared on the novelty board game Burnaby-opoly.

“I’ve been back five times since our review,” Owen said as he dug into that day’s special, a hearty plate of pasta and garlic bread.

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Ezzat is as likely upon first meeting to greet you with a hug as a handshake; both come with a big smile.

Entering his fourth decade of running his little restaurant six days a week, he’s now seeing a fourth generation of customers, the great-grandchildren of his original diners.

When he noticed the Zsillei brothers filming, it wasn’t the first time his cafe was being reviewed for YouTube.

One reviewer shot a video of Yaser’s in Bengali, a couple more in Mandarin, plus a smattering of other reviews.

“Jeremy and Owen just showed up, I didn’t know who they were,” Ezzat said. “They were taking pictures of their food, I assumed it was for their Facebook page.

“A friend of mine sent me the YouTube link, he got it from a friend of his in Boston. It was well-made, the best of the ones I’ve seen.”

The brothers still have their sights set on doing more travel docs, and uncovering further little-known wonders of culinary delight in and around Vancouver in the meantime, aiming for one a month.

And the idea of a short documentary on the mushrooming growth of psilocybin shops in Vancouver appeals to them.

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“I think Owen summed it up best,” Jeremy said. “Our channel is like if our friends and family were to come to Vancouver, what would we show them? Things we like.

“We just enjoy finding cool places.”

gordmcintyre@postmedia.com

twitter.com/gordmcintyre

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