Speaker A
Oh, what is that? You find me on the side of a road in New Jersey with a man called Kenneth.
Max Fosh hunts roadkill in New Jersey to serve it secretly to NYC food influencers at a pop-up restaurant.
Key Takeaways
- Roadkill can be an ethical and sustainable source of meat if handled properly.
- Legal regulations for collecting roadkill vary by state and require caution.
- Creative cooking can transform roadkill into appealing gourmet dishes.
- Food influencers can be surprised by the origins of their meals without prior knowledge.
- Pop-up restaurants offer a unique platform for experimental culinary concepts.
What the video covers
- Max Fosh travels to New Jersey to hunt roadkill with experts Kenneth and Janet.
- They search various hotspots to find fresh roadkill within 24 hours.
- Max plans a pop-up restaurant in New York City serving only roadkill dishes.
- Janet and Kenneth share insights on roadkill legality, ethics, and cooking.
- The team collects deer, possum, and raccoon roadkill for the menu.
- Max develops creative dishes like venison steak and sliders from the roadkill.
- New York food influencers dine at the pop-up unaware of the true source of their meal.
- The video includes a promotion for the Whatnot app and a MacBook Neo giveaway.
- Max reflects on the challenges and reactions to serving roadkill as gourmet food.
- The project highlights ethical and sustainable meat consumption alternatives.
Chapters
- 00:00Introduction and Meeting Kenneth
- 00:40Journey to New Jersey and Roadkill Experts
- 02:24Roadkill Hunting Team and Strategy
- 02:44Roadkill Hotspots and Legalities
- 03:51Roadkill Search in Fair Haven
- 04:37Whatnot App Promotion
- 05:18Roadkill Cooking Insights and First Finds
- 09:34Collecting and Preparing Roadkill
- 09:44Pop-up Restaurant Setup
- 10:34Cooking and Serving Roadkill Dishes
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
Speaker A
Is that a possum? That's definitely a possum. And we're hunting for roadkill. Can you eat them? Can you eat possums?
Speaker A
Yeah, probably. And we better find something soon because in 24 hours, some of New York's biggest food influencers will be eating at my brand new restaurant. Oh dear.
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Conceptual dining established 2026, where every item on the menu has been found by the side of the road. That looks pretty fresh though, right?
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And they have no idea. I like it a lot. Is this illegal? Will I get sued? And how will they react when I tell them you all ate roadkill?
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What I've done? All very good questions that I was not thinking about because I was too busy sat on a train heading to New Jersey to meet Kenneth.
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I'm arriving into Red Bank. I traveled to Red Bank, New Jersey, a charming town a few hours outside of New York City and the starting location of my hunt for roadkill.
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Right, let's go. But despite being the soon-to-be proprietor of my very own roadkill restaurant, I'm far from a roadkill enthusiast. So, it was a good job I was about to meet two of them.
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I was told that they were going to be wearing an orange t-shirt for safety.
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Hello. How you doing? Introducing our experts for the day. Janet, a former New York City model and presenter turned roadkill expert.
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Oh, that's a really good problem to have. And Kenneth. Kenneth, if you ain't catching flatheads, you ain't catching.
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Proud South Carolina, self-proclaimed country boy and a hunting, fishing, and roadkilling aficionado. All this traffic and all these people.
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The city stuff ain't for me. And to give you an idea of just how much of a country boy he is, even his drive up to New Jersey was full of new experiences. I've already been in like six different states I've never been to.
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I've never been to Pennsylvania. I've never been to America. And between the two of them, I felt like I was in pretty safe hands.
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I'm considered a roadkill expert. So, we're going to see what we can just find off the cuff. And hopefully, we're going to get some fresh stuff.
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I love the t-shirts. I've got t-shirts for you guys, too, so you can put them on.
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Oh, you have one. The first step of any roadkill hunt, put on your team colors.
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This is the roadkill hunting team. The newest member. And with that, the gang was ready to hit the road.
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Let's go get us a deer. The plan was simple. Tomorrow, a horde of New York's biggest food influencers would be descending on a brand new pop-up restaurant in the city, and I would have to feed them all using
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roadkill. We'd have to find out on the New Jersey roads. Janet and Kenneth had mapped out a route of roadkill hotspots around the area. The strategy being to hit them all again and again. The hot spots they are, not the roadkill.
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Until we had enough food to feed our guests. We had just 24 hours to find it, process it, develop a menu, and serve it to our guests, all without them knowing what they're having. So, we better get moving.
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The first place we're going to go is a little city called Fair Haven. So, why roadkill? Well, roadkill is considered to be quite an ethical way of eating meat. Peter themselves say that eating roadkill is healthier for the
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consumer and it's more humane. And en route, Janet filled me in on the legalities of collecting roadkill in the United States. Every state has their own laws and regulations. So in New Jersey, what they want you to do is call the
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police. You can say, "Can I take it if you want it?" And they'll let you take it.
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Kenneth, on the other hand, had a slightly different take on the law. We know one thing about you, Max. You're looking for trouble, so we're going to snatch and grab. We ain't calling the police today.
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We'd arrived at stop number one, the small town of Fair Haven. So you're expecting to find stuff around here?
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Oh, yeah. You'd be shocked at the roadkill that will be in the nice neighborhoods of New Jersey.
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And it wasn't long before Kenneth's eagle eyes spotted something. I seen something, but I didn't.
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Okay. But what was it? What had Kenneth seen? Well, it was a minuscule amount of deer blood by the side of the road.
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You can see these spots real good. And it looks like something was here, but it ain't.
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How have you seen that, Kenneth? It probably died right here. Or no, it died right there. No luck here yet.
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I mean, it's been 5 minutes. This is what you look for. No luck yet, but we were just getting started. And if Kenneth was confident, so was I.
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Well, we're going to have to get outside of town. Well, let's go. With no time to spare, we headed to stop number two, scouring the road as we went, all while enjoying the delights of local rural radio.
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Now, this one goes out to all the folk looking for more than just roadkill on the side of the road. People looking for a real deal.
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And today, Whatnot are letting me give away a MacBook Neo to one of you. Do you want a MacBook? Yeah. So, here's how you enter.
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Step one, sign up to Whatnot using my link in the description or use the QR code on screen right now. Yeah, nice.
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Step two, claim your £10 in free credit. Then, step three, make your first purchase or you can comment your Whatnot username down below. Then, you enter for the MacBook. But what is Whatnot? Well, Whatnot is an app where you can
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buy pretty much anything live from a load of small businesses. You just enter a show, swipe to bid on an auction, and hopefully you can grab yourself an absolute bargain. One of my favorite things to buy on Whatnot are trainers.
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Right, let's get into an auction. Those Nike trainers are an absolute bargain. Just need to swipe on a bid. Perfect.
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Won that bid. Get in. With your £10 free credit, you can buy almost anything.
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Look at this. Get in. Auction one. So, make sure you download Whatnot using my link in the description below or scan the QR code. Claim your £10 free credit and use it to make a purchase and you're entered for that MacBook Neo giveaway.
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Yeah. Well, mama, what a charming man. And let's get back to those roadkill hunts.
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See how they're getting on. We left the townships behind us and drove deeper into the countryside. And as we searched, I learned more from Janet about the wild world of roadkill cooking.
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To the Roadkill Festival, we usually go with about a team of seven, eight people.
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What's the Roadkill Festival? That's in West Virginia. And they have a roadkill cook-off competition.
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Right. We've won third place for our deer burger. Okay. The deer burger. That's your specialty?
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Yeah. That and our spaghetti. Deer spaghetti. And Kenneth regaled me with more musings on his first ever trip to the north.
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Kenneth seen a lot of stuff for the first time. It's really exciting. It was actually good.
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Was it good? Did you enjoy? Yeah, it's good. He just never had one before.
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And less than an hour later, we spotted our first actual roadkill. Oh, we just saw something. It's going to be disgusting, but let's just go check.
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We'll see if we can see what it is. Oh, what is that? Is that a possum, Kenneth? That's definitely a possum.
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Unfortunately, I wouldn't call it particularly restaurant ready. Can you eat possum? Yeah. Despite Kenneth's claims to the contrary, I thought it was best to move on for something a little higher quality. We continued on our route and mere minutes later, Janet had another
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sighting. Something is that something right there. Oh, pull over. Two. Two. Oh my god, we're at two.
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Yeah, let's go. A very dead possum. How? That looks pretty fresh though, right? Yeah, he ain't been dead long.
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Oh, there's another one. Oh, there's two of them. And not far behind it, a raccoon. And while I wasn't too keen on the idea of raccoon being the star dish at my new restaurant,
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Oh, he looks good. Janet and Ken, on the other hand, were ecstatic with the find.
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Yeah, I say we take him. Let's take him. He don't have a tail. I've never seen a raccoon with no tail.
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We're not go
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Despite the bulletproof certainty of the pull the hairs on the belly to test the freshness test, if I'm being completely honest, I wasn't too happy about serving this particular critter either, but it was all that we had.
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We found one. First success. Yeah, let's go for more. The day went on and we continued along our route. Our two finds in quick succession had boosted morale, but as the minutes passed, we were coming up with nothing.
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I mean, all of these rows look great. It's just about, you know, just making sure that we tick all of them off.
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There were signs of deer everywhere, so it felt like we were close. A live deer. Oh, yeah.
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But if we were going to get enough roadkill to feed an entire restaurant, we were going to have to find a big specimen and find it fast. And I was starting to worry that 30 people might be sharing one raccoon. But as they say
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in the Roadkill world, you got to trust the process. And luckily, that process provided.
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Oh my gosh, there's roadkill. There's a deer back there. pretty impressed. Oh my gosh, I can't believe it.
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So, we pulled over for a closer look. And what we found was pretty special.
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It looks pretty good. An entire deer properly processed. This guy should be able to provide enough for an entire tasting menu. And it looks pretty damn fresh, too.
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His mates are in the field to the left. How long do you think it's been here for?
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I'd say he was uh late last night, early this morning. Before loading him into the back of the truck, it was time for the trusty freshness test.
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Max, do you want to do the honors and test on the Yeah. Yeah. There you go.
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You got to do the belly. He was perfect. Recently hit and extremely fresh. So, after the safety sign off from Janet and Kenneth, we loaded him onto the truck.
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It's a young beard. We're going to get some real good prime steaks off of them.
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We'll use them nose to tail. Yeah, this is a good 50 lbs. Fit for a king.
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Fit for a king. in New York's finest food influences. Our meat was secured and stored. Now it was up to Janet and Kenneth to safely process the meat, ready for our launch tomorrow. I headed back to the Big Apple
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the next day. I arrived at the restaurant. Posters, other bits of branding. The Pineapple Club, the finest establishments in New York City, because they have allowed us to do it at their establishment. I have taken over their restaurant today. The influencers are
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arriving in about 2 and 1/2 hours. So, with my guests due in a couple of hours, I wasted no time turning this spot into New York's finest new pop-up. But what was the name of my new culinary experiment? Tarmac. Tarmac and Chi. Hit
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and run. Hit and Yum. Uh, bam. Bye. Raccoon mata. Oh. Oh dear. Oh dear. Oh dear.
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Conceptual dining established 2026. We've also got the menu. A variety of different things. This is what we're going to be cooking with. Quite bloody.
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Looks pretty good. It's street food. And by that I mean it was food found on the street.
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Now this isn't my first time pulling this particular stunt. That was roadkill. So to make sure my face didn't give the game away, I've recruited a friend. This is Joe. Joe is going to be the beautiful face of O Dear this afternoon.
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A food content creator himself. Joe is a trusted and well-connected person on the scene.
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I would recommend it to people and the perfect individual to lure a group of his influencer friends to his fake restaurant. I just need some food waffle from you.
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So, with a load of Tik Tockers and YouTubers heading our way, I would need some assistance in the kitchen to feed these hungry patrons.
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How you doing? I'm Max. I'm going to be cooking with you. Oh, awesome. Which is why I'd enlisted the help of these two legends, Manuel and April, who weren't fully aware of what we were actually cooking. You know where the the
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meat came from? It's It's roadkill. Oh, first time cooking roadkill. Yeah. So, fire up the grill, baby. It's cooking time.
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Let's get cracking. Angel and Manuel were straight into the action, cooking up an absolute storm.
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Let me tell you, the banter in the kitchen was a flying. Meanwhile, outside the kitchen, our special guests had started to arrive.
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So, welcome to O dear. You guys are going to be in the corner here. Joe had invited some of his biggest food influencer friends to come and try out his new restaurant. All completely unaware that the food being served to
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them would be roadkill. How's it going, guys? Welcome to O Dear. O dear is a conceptual pop-up restaurant where everything we're serving is going to be venison baked. So make yourselves at home, enjoy your drinks, get ready for some awesome food, and enjoy.
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And with bums on seats, we need to put some foods in mouths. We got sliders. So, time to turn this squashed meat into a three course meal.
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And one cooking montage later. Sliders are done. Steak is done. We're getting the broccoli on. Now it's just about serving it up, making it look good.
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Our first dish was ready to serve. Venison owl buns, barbecue pulled venison, pickled red onions, and cucumber. All served in a light and fluffy bow bun. Just 24 hours ago, this meat was lying crumbled on the side of a highway. And now it's wrapped
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in a bow bun heading towards the mouth of a hungry influencer. As we got some venison bow buns here.
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That was good. That was really good. Super tender. But it was met with mixed reviews.
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I do not like this chewy. Very smoky. I'm not sure about this. Not off to the strongest of starts, but could our next dish get a better reception? And if you're wondering what happened to that raccoon that we found,
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well, you've heard of smashburgers, but have you tried squashed burgers? Venison and raccoon meat sliders topped with caramelized onions and Russian dressing.
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Sliders to start. The influencers were chowing down on my burgers completely unaware of where it came from.
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Oh, he looks good. And more surprisingly, they were actually enjoying them. Your two handed a slider. Do you This is a good slider. That's good. It's good. So, I guess you going to eat the rest of that. Yeah.
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And they weren't the only ones. Cheers. Cheers. They're pretty good. They're very good. That's great.
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Yeah, it's fantastic. You can taste the tarmac. It really adds a little bit of grit that you don't normally get.
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That the sauce. And as we prepared our final dish, I learned there's a good reason why you don't normally eat roadkill.
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That is quite tough. When you eat it, it's not like soft. No. I think OD's number one bestseller is not going to be the steak.
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It's pretty tough. Yeah. There's one guy in there who's like really particular about his steak, so I don't know.
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Right. He might not like it. No. So, I guess just because it was safe to eat doesn't mean it's good to eat.
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That is some tough dip. Tough or not, our guests were expecting one more dish. And for the final dish, I wanted to strip things back and give them roadkill in its simplest form.
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Max's slab of meat. Pan fried venison steak accompanied with mashed potatoes, broccolini, and finished off with a drizzling of peppercorn sauce.
Speaker A
Wow. Thank you very much. The food certainly looked good, but how did it taste?
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Look at the potatoes were great. The sauce was great. Steak was a little bit I think we like it. Yeah, I thought it was really good. It's just that it's a little it's a little tough.
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Steak for me was the best dish by far. But despite some tough feedback, it seems influencers will be influencers as Joe's new restaurants was popping off on the socials.
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Look at this plate here. Wo! And with that, lunch had come to an end.
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Me and the O dear team had turned roadkill into an absolute feast and our guests were having a great time.
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I like it a lot. I really like it. If like my father ordered me that exact dish, I'd be like, "Thanks, Dad. That was a really good meal." So, I appreciate you for that.
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The influencers were in high spirit. But was that all about to change? As it was finally time to show my face and reveal where their meal had really come from.
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Can I just grab everyone's attention real quick, please? I hope you guys had a lot of fun at OD Dear, the pop-up.
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Before we go, I want to introduce you to the founder of OD Dear, the head chef, uh, Max Bosch.
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Hi guys. Thank you. Thank you so much for coming. Um, I founded O Dear a few days ago, if I'm honest. Um, with a vision of bringing street food to life.
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And when I mean street food, I I literally mean street food. Um, you all ate uh this afternoon deer that was found on the I9 highway just outside New Jersey yesterday afternoon.
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Um, so at this point things were quite awkward. Any questions on the foods? Um, anything in particular?
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And I had a bit of explaining to do this as well. Yes, I've had everything back there. I prepared it myself. It was found yesterday morning. Um, it had been passed away a few hours earlier before.
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How did they present it to you? It was on the side of the road, broken legs. Um, can people eat food?
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Um, yes, you can. Yeah. Yeah. Delicious. I went and collected it with a guy called Kenneth and Janet. We found the deer. We went hunting for some deer.
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It's perfectly fresh. How do you find out it's fresh? So, you what you do is you when you pull the hair on on the um if it if it doesn't come off, it means it's fresh to eat. And
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after a bombardment of questions, I think I'd brought them round to the idea. Did you guys enjoy the food?
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Yeah. Thank you so much for coming. Would you guys uh be interested in some more Roadkill?
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Yeah, let's do it. Yeah, we've I know. Amazing. Thank you so much for coming. I may not have boughten the pallets of everyone in the room, but I certainly given them all a dining experience they'll never forget.
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So, are you taking more bites? Yes, I'm taking more bites. Well, thanks again to What Not. Now, remember to make sure to enter the MacBook Neo giveaway by clicking the link in the description and signing up, claiming your £10 free credit, and
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making your first purchase. Network all yours.
Topics:Max Foshroadkillfood influencerspop-up restaurantethical eatingNew Jerseyvenisonraccoonpossumsustainable meat
