Chef Donny turns 30 with a life story on the Yak

Yes, biological. Apparently a man can have more than one kind of birthday, and the Yak went with the one on the birth certificate.

The Yak

@BarstoolYak

Happy 30th (biological) birthday to @chefdonnyy!

The birthday was the excuse, but the real show was Donny's life story, and it's a weird one. According to the clip, Donny walked through the spiritual, physical and biological versions of a birthday. Then the crew got into how a guy who wanted to be a chef ended up at Barstool, and it started with a chance meeting on the other side of the world.

Viva La Stool

@VivaLaStool

Chef Donny talking about how he got his start with Barstool after bumping into Wonton Don in Korea And then he talked about some of his adventures as he was backpacking through India

Viva La Stool@VivaLaStool

Chef Donnie’s 30th biological birthday! (He explains the difference between spiritual physical and biological birthdays in the clip) t.co/napAJww6qY

Some background for anyone new to this one. Donny has told it on the Drop a Pin podcast too. In 2018 he was backpacking around Asia after taking a semester off from college, and a crypto scam called BitConnect had eaten his travel money. Wonton Don was at the Winter Olympics in South Korea filming for Barstool. Donny DM'd him saying he had speed skating tickets, the 2 of them had beers in Seoul, and Don offered him an internship filming and editing in China. Donny took it, moved to China, and that was his first job at Barstool.

Since then he's had his own cooking show, put out a cookbook called Not Your Mothers' Cookbook and made the finals on Chopped. Not bad for an intern who started out broke at the Olympics. But the Yak doesn't let anyone get too wise, and Donny made sure of that himself.

That's the whole bit. A guy with a cookbook, a stint as Wonton Don's intern in China and a run on Chopped turns 30 and tells the room that wisdom teeth actually give you wisdom. Donny has been one of the Yak's best recurring guests in 2026 (Barstool put out a best-of for the first half of the year), and days like this are why: a long, wild life story, then a take nobody can argue with because nobody saw it coming. Happy 30th, Donny. Keep those teeth.