John Mitzewich graduated from Paul Smith's College, New York, in 1983. He received an Associate of Applied Science Degree, with Honors, in Culinary Arts/Chef Training, and was also honored as the school's 1983 "Outstanding Chef Training Student".^[3] He has held various positions throughout the restaurant industry, including Executive Sous Chef at the Carnelian Room, Sous Chef at Ryan's Café, and Garde Manger at the San Francisco Opera. Mitzewich was a Chef Instructor at the California Culinary Academy in San Francisco for five years before leaving to focus on teaching people to cook online.^[3]

He has a partnership with the online food network Allrecipes.com, and has published a cookbook for Paragon Publishing, America's Family Favorites: The Best of Home Cooking.^[4] In 2011, he was awarded Best Home Chef in a Series by Taste TV.^[5]

Perhaps uniquely among Internet food writers, each of Mitzewich's recipes is split between the blog and the video instructions on his YouTube channel, with the exact written ingredient amounts and background information about the recipe being posted on the blog, and the method for preparing the recipe not being written but instead explained through the video on YouTube (which otherwise does not typically describe the exact amounts of all ingredients). He has noted that this allows him to get "paid twice" from the advertising on both sites.^[6]

As of November 2023, Mitzewich has over 4.43 million subscribers to his YouTube channel with over 1 billion views.^[7] Mitzewich has a content partnership deal with YouTube.^[4]

Starting in May 2021 Chef John Mitzewich created and hosted "the chef John podcast" ^[8] together with Andrew Scrivani. Together they would lightheartedly discuss recipes and create various top five lists all about food. They aired 33 freely accessible episodes between 15 and 35 minutes, but seemed to have ended creating any new episodes in December 2022.

A differentiating aspect of Mitzewich's videos on YouTube is his way of filming. He deliberately keeps himself out of the shot, only displaying utensils, ingredients and his hands. He records the narration later.^[9] His narrations are always done in a wandering and almost singsong tone of voice, with one rhyming wordplay joke per video usually of the form "You are after all the X of Y" where X and Y rhyme, and X is a title or celebrity and Y is a technique relevant to the video. An example being: "You are, after all, the Jim Kelly of what goes in your belly!" ^[10]

A unique aspect of Mitzewich's cooking is the inclusion of powdered cayenne pepper in almost every recipe.^[11] He describes the addition of the spice as giving an "extra touch of the heat and bringing the unique tastes of the dishes forward".^{[citation needed]}

In 2019, Mitzewich and his wife moved to Sebastopol, California, where the two purchased a home. Mitzewich has used the community tab on his YouTube channel to provide updates on the home's renovation.^[12]

• Sherman, Elizabeth (April 29, 2019). "Chef John's Soothing Cooking Show 'Food Wishes' Is My Refuge When Life Gets Chaotic". Munchies. Vice.