Los Angeles Restaurant Web Series: Inside My Kitchen

In a world where attention spans are rapidly decreasing, it's tough to stay afloat unless you have a catchy storyline, good characters and, preferably, scrumptious photography. Inside My Kitchen, a YouTube-funded web series, is doing all of that.

Launched in Sept. 2012, the Los Angeles-based production gets behind the scenes at a local restaurant each week and pushes out four to five shorts profiling the eatery. Episodes literally go inside the kitchen of local staples like 800 Degrees, Delphine, Yamashiro and — most recently — Coolhaus. In each feature, the restaurant chef shares the tricks, tools and recipes that makes his or her particular restaurant stand out from the crowd.

“The future of television is not on television but online. A majority of us are turning to our computers and mobile devices for news and entertainment, millennials especially,” founder Jason Calacanis said. “YouTube is a great platform for our shows — we can directly connect with our audience, take suggestions, and form episodes based on what viewers want to see.”

Behind the scenes; Credit: Clarissa Wei

Unlike television food shows, the cost of the entire show is much more modest. At each shoot there are a maximum of five people on staff — the director, two cameramen, a sound guy and a writer. Episodes take a week to edit and are immediately published online.

The goal: to be an interactive restaurant web-series. “We're really focusing on audience development,” Jay Ahn, the director of the series, said. “What's awesome is that once people comment, we can incorporate their suggestions and immediately shoot it and answer it in that way.”

“We're averaging about 6,000 new subscribers a month,” Allison Mac, director of public relations for Inside My Kitchen said. “L.A. loves their food.”

Their latest episode:

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