A week ago, Elijah Quashie was an unknown YouTube blogger. Now, as he reveals his latest chicken shop review, he has thousands of new followers and big ideas for the future

Two weeks ago, he was a chicken fan with a tiny YouTube following. Now, he has a manager, millions of fans and a secret plan for world domination. But the Chicken Connoisseur has zero appetite for discussing his age. Is he a teenager, as many assumed when his video reviews of London chicken shops went viral last week? With boyish features and dressed in his Sunday best, the then-unnamed critic attracted millions of hits. But then, in a tweeted – and now deleted – reply to the question of age, he said he was 23.

“I don’t really see that there’s much of a need to confirm it,” says Elijah Quashie, in a phone interview arranged by his manager and old friend Marwan Elgamal. Quashie is promoting episode seven of Pengest Munch, which you can watch below, in which the Chicken Connoisseur goes to North Finchley. “To be honest, I can’t remember what I tweeted or didn’t tweet – a lot’s been going on,” he says.

Quashie, from Tottenham, north London, realised things were exploding when his phone started buzzing while he sat on a train. Until a little over a week ago, his videos had about 700 views each. His YouTube channel, which he started in August 2015, had 150 subscribers. At the time of writing, the videos now have about a million views each and the channel almost a quarter of a million subscribers.

“My head is still spinning,” Quashie says. “Before, I might have had a lie-in, take my time and go and make some jam and peanut butter sandwiches. Now it’s this interview, or this thing. It’s been hectic. But it’s kind of what I wanted, just not necessarily at this scale.”

Quashie attributes his unexpected fame to “the bald one on MasterChef”. Last year, he was idly watching Gregg Wallace judging a plate of food. “I wondered to myself, what makes his opinion more valued than anyone else’s? Is it because he’s been eating more food, so he has an experienced palate? I’m not sure. I thought, no one is doing this for the type of people who eat at chicken shops.”

Chicken shops have become integral to communities across our cities. “This isn’t me being cliched, but I genuinely don’t know what life would be like without them,” Quashie says. “When I link up with my friends, we go to the chicken shop and eat and chill. If not there, we might end up going to someone’s house but then someone has to cook and it’s a bit long.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest For Quashie, chicken shops live and die by price. Photograph: Youtube

Quashie, who has always been the class joker, is unimpressed by the more recent rise of high-end pretenders, including Chicken Shop, the Soho House chain. “If I want to spend £10 on chicken, I’ll go to my local bossman and feed five people,” he says. For Quashie, shops live or die by price, but he says that lighting and seating arrangements are also vital. “These things affect the mood of the place,” he adds.

The suits he wears while reviewing (typical line: “The burger caught me off-guard, ’cos it was hench … man definitely chewed on a bone”) are his church clothes. “I thought it was funny, because people might demean chicken shops,” Quashie says, “but it’s just as much a restaurant.”

The videos, made by Elishama Udorok, a filmmaker friend of Quashie’s, went viral when the sixth episode took off on Reddit and Twitter. Now Quashie, a former shoe-shop worker with a collection of 40 pairs of rare trainers, is getting recognised on the street. Recently, he says, a paramedic shouted at him from an ambulance, insisting that his local Chick-King could not be matched.

Quashie tries to limit chicken shop meals to one or two a week. “Before this thing blew up, I was thinking I might need to cut down to get my diet on point, but now …” he says. “But most of the time I’m eating jollof rice or a bit of plantain.” He also has plans to leverage his burgeoning fame into a new project. As to what that might be, though, he wants to keep fans guessing. “We’re talking about expensive intellectual property, so I will keep it under wraps,” he says.