Take a peek into our new bespoke issue, a land where it's breakfast for dinner and NFTs for lunch.
Despite what you may have heard, Jeremy Fall is no celebrity chef. “I’ve never called myself a chef,” says Fall over our Zoom call. “I still don’t today — which is funny because it even says that on my fucking Wikipedia, right?” To Fall, the title of ‘chef’ commands more respect than it is usually given, as he learned as a child, growing up with his mother and ex-stepfather in downtown Los Angeles.
“My stepfather was a chef, and he didn’t even want to call himself a chef, because he came from a French family. In Europe and in France in particular, a chef is something you slowly grow into. It’s something you earn, it’s a very respectable title. Today, chef has become synonymous with ‘cook’.
Instead, it would be in the overall hospitality industry where Fall would make his mark. He would come to own and operate 14 bars and restaurants in Los Angeles and Illinois, under his company J. Fall Group, which he sold in 2019. Most notable was his first restaurant Nighthawk, which introduced the ‘breakfast for dinner’ concept, and its quirky lineup of original cocktails, including alcoholic cereal milk. Thereafter, Nighthawk garnered press in abundance, was included in the likes of ‘The Hottest Bars from Coast to Coast’ in North America and Fall himself was included in the Forbes 30 Under 30 for Food & Drink in 2020.
“I got into hospitality because I love the space”, says Fall. “I had grown up being a busboy/server, and fame and entertainment was never really my thing.” But Fall recognised that the emergence of social media could help him promote his bars and club nights (that he promoted as a teenager).
From our initial few words with each other, I learned that Fall is very aware of online culture and new digital media. I wanted to understand what he thought of platforms like TikTok and YouTube, and how they can cultivate a career for a young chef today, as opposed to building their brand through the traditional model of TV appearances on the Food Network.
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It’s clear that Fall is an early adopter. So it only makes sense that after the acquisition of his restaurant group, he turned his attention to his latest fascination — crypto, the metaverse, NFTs and the blockchain.
Fall begins by relaying a fascinating theory on food: “Everyone on the planet loves watching food on TV. You’re not eating it, but you enjoy watching it, right? That means food has an additional emotional connector that is visual. So if you enjoy watching it,
you should enjoy the food as a cultural unifier in the NFT space.”
Fall founded media company jfall in 2021, and subsequently Probably Nothing, which aims to educate and inform people on NFTs and the Metaverse. “Probably Nothing is a term that has been sarcastically used in the crypto/NFT space” and was adopted by the enthusiasts to parody the mainstream media who say that this movement is “probably nothing”, says Fall. His goal is to onboard people into the space through news, educational pieces and other media.
For Fall, the NFT space represents connection with others. Similar to his philosophy on food — illustrated on the jfall website tagline as “food is the conduit to conversation” — NFTs are all about community. Fall explains; “Let’s say there is 10,000 NFTs for one project, and everyone owns one. There’s 10,000 people connected through their ownership in that one thing.
This communal aspect even plays out in the language and verbiage that blockchain enthusiasts use online. “If you goon twitter you’ll see that most mornings are GM, which means good morning, and at night it’s GN (or good night),” says Fall. Another aspect of the space that Fall likes is that it is universal. “Crypto is the world’s currency,” says Fall. For him it’s
a community with worldwide boundaries and limitless potential.
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The above feature is abridged, to read the full interview with Jeremy Fall get yourself a copy of our limited edition zine below now…
Jeremy Fall
