The spread in Justin Bieber's "Yummy" video is bananas — as in there are banana fingers on the table, as well as crunchy plates of French fries, lo mein with gumballs, whole lobsters, mounds of cheese puffs, jiggly Jell-O molds embedded with grapes and surrounded by scallops, green gelatin with peas ringed by shrimp, strawberry water and a cheese sandwich with a face featuring a pickle tongue.
It's a lot, so naturally Billboard reached out to Viceland Dead Set on Life celebrity chef (and Bieber's fellow Canadian) Matty Matheson to get his hot take on the singer's sumptuous, sinful spread. "Oh man, you could do an entire pop-up serving that kind of food and see who shows up," the author of 2018's Matty Matheson: A Cookbook (as well as an upcoming second collection of recipes) tells Billboard. "It's all nothingness food, but maybe eating strawberries and lobsters and Jell-O molds with banana fingers and gumballs is the height of cuisine. Maybe we're just not intelligent enough to understand it and maybe Bieber is on some future food and him and Elon Musk] are on their way to Mars with the Jell-O molds."
The colorful Bardia Zeinali-directed clip in which a pink-haired JB holds court at the world's wackiest dinner party while singing the smooth R&B jam got a thumbs-up from the chef known for his signature Rapper Pie and famous P&L burger. Matheson says he thought the spread and the vibe of the video were done in "really good taste," especially given that it avoided the potentially cliché ending he was anticipating.
"I was thinking there would be a food fight at the end and he'd kick the food off the table," says Matheson, who would have found that denoument to be disrespectful to the carefully prepared spread. "I like that he didn't throw the food or go full-tilt and kick it like a badass. … You could see the food was still laid out on the table very nicely and no one was, like, eating cake off some woman's boobs or anything. I'm glad they didn't do all that cliché stuff."
Matheson was also digging the cheese sandwich with olive eyes and a pickle tongue laid out in front of Justin and the "nostalgic" vibe of the whole thing, which reminded him of an episode of his Vice web series It's Suppertime! that delved into the 1950s Jello-O mold era. "It's such an iconic time where people would show up to someone's house with a Jell-O mold with hot dogs in it and oddly put anything in Jell-O to make these sweet and savory molds. It's all very picturesque and fake grand, all presentation, all sizzle, no steak, all filler, which is why the video is cute."
And even though both Matheson, 37, and Bieber, 25, are too young to remember that key-party era, Matheson loves the playful nature of the menu. Sure, he might not cook up a meal like that, but he would gladly make a Jell-O mold and some whole lobster with gumballs and curly parsley garnish if Justin was the guest of honor. "It's all very picturesque food and the funniest thing is when they slap the Jell-O and it jiggles, which is a timeless joke," he says. "Also, that lobster and french fries was the realest thing. I'm from the Maritimes, so that looked amazing. I'd love to eat a lobster dinner with Bieber."
In fact, his only question was why Bieber didn't call him to cook up the "Yummy" food. "Why aren't we friends? We're both Canadian, let's get a cup of coffee] at Tim's Horton's] and a double-double," he jokes about the uniquely Canadian coffee preparation at the iconic doughnut chain that typically includes two creams and two sugars.
Watch the "Yummy" video below.
