“U KNO WUT BROS???” celebrity chef Jacques La Merde asks on one of his signature #foodporn Instagram posts. He’s about to tell us the secret ingredient in his latest culinary masterpiece, an eye-catching array of bright orange food cut into sharp geometric shapes and precisely arranged on a minimalist stoneware plate. The caption continues: “WHEN UR WORKIN W/ A GREAT PRODUCT, EVERYTHING U ADD UR ACTUALLY TAKIN AWAY FROM ITS OVERALL CRED.” This about a dish made entirely of Velveeta.

Hilariously obnoxious and supremely bro-tastic, La Merde has gained nearly 130,000 followers by making the worst of gas station fare—Skittles, Hostess cakes, canned sausages—look like the world’s best haute cuisine. One time he plated a Pop-Tart with Cry Babies and Mike and Ikes. On another occasion he railed against the evils of chocolate lava cake (“CAN WE NOT JUST MOVE ON?!!!”) and smeared Snack Pack Juicy Gels over a Lucky Charms breakfast bar.

The French chef has been sharing these nonsense snacks with such overzealous yet lovable stupidity since February 2015, but until recently nobody knew who this guy actually was. Curious followers figured there probably wasn’t a real Jacques La Merde (translation: “Jack the Shit”) earnestly peddling his beef-jerky-and-Doritos dishes at some overpriced New American joint. But considering the amount of skill that went into plating all those peanut butter Drumsticks and countless fistfuls of Nerds, there had to be somebody behind the account with some serious industry cred. A disgruntled sous-chef, no doubt—some dude living in Brooklyn who’d had it with the snobbery of fine dining and was ready to give up his organic devotion and dismiss his gluten intolerance cuz YOLO.

Then Bravo hosted a special Instagram-themed episode of Top Chef in January that dealt a blow to everyone’s assumptions. For the first time, La Merde revealed himself to the public. As it turned out, it was a herself—Canadian chef Christine Flynn.

She was an unlikely candidate, and not just because of her gender. Flynn has a nutrition diploma and works at iQ Food Co., where the fare is mostly kale and quinoa—plant-based ingredients far from deconstructed Filet-O-Fish or any of the other materials she works with to create La Merde’s cuisine del’absurde.

“It’s all pretty granola-crunchy, which I love. Very sustainable,” Flynn says of her work at iQ. “But for me, sustainability also involves having a Dorito now and again. Otherwise, what’s the point?”

That’s why she came up with La Merde, a character she describes as a “bumbling idiot chef” who loves his work but has no idea what he’s really doing. He has no sense of tact, grammar, or food politics, but he’s given Flynn a chance to get in touch with her artsier side and de-stress after work by practicing her plating in a low-key environment—her apartment. She says the joy of making Michelin-style meals out of cheap lunch meats, Marshmallow Fluff, homemade Red Bull foam, and KFC Double Downs is that she doesn’t have to think too much about how any of it actually tastes, leaving her free to play with the bizarre palette of artificial colors, deep-fried textures, and unnatural shapes characteristic of processed food.

“I have laughed more in the last year than I have in my entire life,” she says.

After nearly 20 years in the food industry, Flynn isn’t just making this merde up. She pulls ridiculous captions—one classic: “NEVER BE AFRAID TO THROW THE PLATE AGAINST THE WALL AND START OVERRRRRRR!!!!!”—right from her own experiences working within the often egocentric, self-indulgent, and exquisitely bro-y culture of industrial kitchens, where the number of women in leadership roles is growing but still lags. By making La Merde such an over-the-top stereotype of the macho chef, “I’m calling out some of the more extreme parts of the industry,” Flynn says. “But it’s also lighthearted, benevolent satire.”

Now that Flynn is out in the world owning that satire, she’s been using the account to build a network of good-natured industry partners who know how to take a joke. In March she helped put together a leadership conference for women working in the food business, and she has been partnering with a handful of fellow chefs and even a few junk food companies interested in capitalizing on La Merde’s success. Most notably, Flynn designed a collection of ultramodern, square-shaped, limited-time-only milk shakes for Sonic Drive-In. At Coachella, customers could only purchase the #squareshakes through Instagram, a wink at the growing number of social media platforms and apps leaning into the food-ordering space.

But as La Merde outgrows Flynn’s initial art-project ambitions, she’s trying not to let things get too out of hand.

“We’re ultimately just talking about snacks here,” she says.

And gross ones at that. When Flynn is done building and photographing her heinous creations—Gerber baby food and macaroni salad, anyone?—she usually feeds the leftovers to her two dogs. As far as they know, they’re gourmet treats.