Talented Italian Pascale Sciarappa is a YouTube celebrity chef whose love affair with cooking his national food stretches back nearly 65 years. He began working in the food industry as a teenager in 1957 and currently has well over half a million subscribers to his long-running YouTube channel, Orsara Recipes, which features hundreds of recipe videos that have been viewed over 45 million times. Known across the world simply as Chef Pasquale, his easy-to-follow recipes, passion for good food, and his strong Italian accent — undimmed by years of living in America — have endeared him to aspiring Italian cooks all over the world.

Sciarappa was born in the small Italian town of Orsara di Puglia (which would later inform his choice of YouTube Channel name) way back in 1939. Aged 18, he began working in kitchens in the city of Torino before relocating to the United States, eventually settling down in Long Branch, New Jersey. Despite retiring from his beloved trade some years ago, Sciarappa still wanted to share his love of traditional Italian cuisine with people, and YouTube offered the perfect way. The platform was still relatively new when Sciarappa launched Orsara Recipes in 2008, but he has proved that it’s not just young influencers who can build an international reputation through social media, As well as his hundreds of thousands of YouTube subscribers, Sciarappa also has 1.4 million followers on Facebook!

As well as his cooking skills, Sciarappa is known for his sense of humour — a 2014 blooper reel of him trying to pronounce “Worcestershire Sauce” went viral, gaining millions of hits and doubtless bringing a whole new host of viewers for his wonderful videos.