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When Spencer Walker first stepped foot on his college campus, he found himself unable to catch the amorous eye of even one coed.
“I suffered with women,” Walker said last week in an interview with the Phoenix. “I came to college with high hopes of these crazy sexscapades, but I had no game. I had anti-game. Literally, my friends would keep me away from girls so I wouldn’t embarrass them.”
So, like any hormonally driven freshman, he knew he had to come up with a strategy.
“One thing I liked to do is cook. I soon figured out that if you cook for them, women will give into your desires.” That is how he came up with his simple (and apparently fruitful) philosophy on romance: Cook to Bang.
Long before the concept had a name, Walker was using it to help friends of both sexes spice things up. Now, with his new blog-turned-book, Cook to Bang: A Lay Cook’s Guide to Getting Laid, everyone will be getting a peek into his way of life. Just don’t confuse it with something Alton Brown or Bobby Flay may have written.
In his book, he explores not only recipes designed to spice up the evening with sexy ingredients, but also the history of “cooking to bang,” which goes all the way back to the Stone Age, proper dating etiquette, identifying different date “types” (from Hipster Ho-bags to Nascar Nasties) and even foods to avoid due to their non-sexy or gassy natures.
Through all of it he keeps a constant and lighthearted stream of explicit language and tongue-in-cheek innuendo, including lines suggesting you and your dinner partner do things to make the “religious right gasp.” And they’re not limited to the prose; Walker prides himself on giving his recipes sexual names. Some favorites of the author?
“Well there’s Miso Horny Cod … Queso-diddla-ya … I really like Shake your Frittatas,” said Walker, “I always get lots of comments on Slob on Your Knobbler Cobbler and Eggplant Parmesan Booty Bomb. […] Really, anything to get a cheap laugh.”
And there are laughs aplenty in his book, especially if you enjoy Apatow-esque humor. Some of his comparisons and allusions will make you laugh out loud, drawing odd looks from everyone sitting close to you in the library (not that I’d know), and his delicious and easy- to-follow recipes would be impressive even without the raunchy wit. Don’t worry, penny-pinchers, he prides himself on providing men and women cheap ways to woo their prizes.
“Dating is expensive [especially] once you get out of college,” he said. “I was broke, and I met all of these girls and I had to come up with something to stand out from the guys with the BMWs and the bank account.”
Despite all of the references to genitalia and bumping uglies, Walker actually spent the majority of his career as a writer and producer for children’s cartoons, including The Replacements, Ying Yang Yo, Johnny Test and Ni Hao, Kai-Lan. But all that came only after realizing that cooking professionally wasn’t for him.
After college and a brief stint in the restaurant business, he moved to Los Angeles to become a “struggling writer” while he worked for a few different catering businesses, but found it all unfulfilling.
“People want to go to a restaurant and get the same dish. It’s all about consistency. You have to make the same thing over and over, and I like trying new things.”
So he decided to work at a talent agency before scoring an interview as an assistant to a producer from Nickelodeon, and the rest was history. Until the 2007 writers’ strike that is.
“For about four to five months there was no work,” he said. “I needed a creative outlet. If I’m not writing, I’m not happy with myself. […] So I started a blog. I thought, you know, I like cooking and I like writing, so I’ll do my own take.”
And so cooktobang.com was born. It grew quickly, going from a few hundred views to as many as 10,000 a day. Walker posts five days a week with new recipes (numbering over 400 now) complete with step-by-step pictures. Soon a book deal came, and now Cook to Bang is coming out May 11.
“My hope is that the book is so successful that I’ll never be allowed to write a children’s show again,” Walker said.
Though most of his cracks are about sex and relationships, he wants one thing to be clear: He’s no Tucker Max.
“[Max] is hilarious, but he’s a mysoginist. I have lots of women friends,” he said. “I know the target audience is males, but I wrote it for women too, even lesbians and gay men. Cooking for someone, it builds a connection and it leads to beautiful things. I kind of had to create a persona for it: I’m not the cook to bang guy. I don’t wake up, look in the mirror and say ‘Hey, look at you, who are you going to cook to bang tonight?’”
“Really, I like to say that in some ways Cook to Bang is the ultimate feminist point,” Walker argued. “I’m putting men back into the kitchens and having them cook for the women. It’s bringing sexy back, adding romance to it.”
He realizes, however, that his humor isn’t for everyone.
“It’s Cook to Bang, not Cook to Cuddle. If I wanted to write cook to cuddle and bring it to the Lifetime Network, I would, but that’s not me.”
“Look,” he said. “I’m not the best looking guy, I’m not the richest, not the tallest. I’m taking the expertise of how you work professionally and doing my own thing with it. Again, it’s for the younger version of me.
“I’m trying to help that poor bastard out.”
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