Former tattoo artist Charlie Gruar-Farrelly and DJ Seymore Harrison have formed a bromance that is founded on food.
On TikTok and Instagram, the duo are better known as The Eggplant Boys, sharing their recipes through bite-sized, mouth-watering videos.
"There's a lot of bad energy out there, and we hope to be like that positive vibe for people," said Gruar-Farrelly.
"It's just amazing what this positive energy together can kind of attract," added Harrison.
Although they banter like an old married couple, the twosome is unanimous when it comes to packing their food full of flavour. There are no recipes with these cooks who create kai on the fly.
"Cooking is our creative outlet and we love being creative and being innovative and trying new things all the time. Every time we cook something it's slightly different to the last time we cooked it, we learn and we change it and it tastes better," said Gruar-Farrelly.
What their food lacks in technique is more than made up for in flavour. Experimenting with combinations is strongly encouraged.
"It's more about the things you're learning along the way than it is about what you're going to get in at the end of it. There's no failing if you're being creative," Gruar-Farrelly said.
The boys speak from personal experience. Before they met almost three years ago by chance, Gruar-Farrelly was grieving his mother's death and Harrison was going through a tough time.
"There was a situation that was happening in my life and forced me to be in the trenches which, made me tunnel vision and it made me not see the support that I had around me," Harrison said.
"Sometimes we feel alone and sometimes we're surrounded by human beings and we feel like there's no one here."
They found their salvation in the kitchen, and through kai, the pair want to promote what they call positive masculinity - encouraging tāne not to be afraid to show their vulnerability.
"We always check up on each other, just randomly too even if we're both feeling like we're on top of the world at the same time," Harrison said.
There's also a sprinkling of Te Reo through their videos, with Te Reo an ingredient Harrison, who is from Mangamuka in the Far North, wants to learn and use more of.
"I'm 31 now and I'm not fluent, but just of late I've been taking Te Reo classes and it's still early stages. It's never too late," he said.
For their next course, The Eggplant Boys are going from online to in-person, securing a commercial kitchen to feed their more than 3000 followers.
"We want to create this space for people to come in and dine in with us. While we cook and they're right here with us, anything that we can do to encourage people to cook, especially males."
Harrison wants to show others who are struggling what cooking has done for him, celebrating how creating tasty morsels of food has changed his life.
"I'm here, I've got a TV show, a new best friend, a loving partner, a happy child and a golf cart with a grill on the back!"
Made with support from Te Māngai Pāho and the Public Interest Journalism Fund.
