Meet the Dad Who Likes to Keep Food Blogging in the Family
Matt Robinson was inspired by his wife Naomi to start a food blog. All photos courtesy of Real Food by Dad.
Matt Robinson can hardly grasp what life must have been like for his mother, who successfully raised nine (yep, nine) children and kept them well fed with a steady stream of hearty casseroles and pot roasts. Now a father and chef to three young boys himself, the blogger behind Real Food by Dad has new appreciation for her labor of love. “As I get older, I don’t know how she did it,” Robinson told us, incredulous.
These days, Robinson does most of the weeknight cooking for his family. He tends to favor simple, crowd-pleasing fare, from waffles of all shapes and sizes to cheeky mashups like beefy enchilada melts and BLT pizzas. All dishes, after they’ve been carefully styled and photographed, are scarfed down by his hungry brood. But he didn’t cook much himself until a few years ago, when wife Naomi quit her job to pursue her own blog, Bakers Royale, full-time. It should sound familiar — Naomi was last week’s Blogger of the Week.
Chocolate chip banana muffins.
“When she started her blog, I was like, ‘Why are you doing this?’” Robinson recalled. But then he got curious. “Eventually I just stated watching her and learning from her. Before I would eat out of pure necessity; I never really had fun with food until I saw what she was doing. It was awesome.”
That was a year ago. Since then, Robinson has grown a devoted social following — Real Food by Dad has more than 13,000 followers on Instagram alone — and quit his finance job. The Robinson household now includes two full-time food bloggers, who cook, photograph, and style their dishes side-by-side in a single 12-by-10-foot kitchen.
A hearty chorizo bake.
“It’s not big at all,” Robinson said with a laugh. “It’s clean, but there’s always food or ingredients out.” There’s one oven, one microwave, and kitchen gadgets covering nearly ever square inch of available space. And that’s not even considering their garage, which is filled to the brim with styling props from blocks of wood to vintage plates.
“It’s tough sometimes — we can get really frustrated with each other,” Robinson admitted. “It’s like, ‘Oh, I needed the oven! But we make it work… It’s made us and our marriage a million times better.”
Although the who-gets-the-oven-when debate continues to rage on, Robinson made a point of noting that he’s won another battle: Whose food their son Cole, age 8, likes best. “I’m like, ‘You want to get an ice cream? And he says, ‘No, thanks,’” Robinson recounts. “He’s quirky. He brags to people what a great baker is mother is, but he never touches the stuff. I don’t have the biggest sweet tooth either, so maybe it’s genetic.”
Eggs send pizza straight into breakfast territory.
Robinson has aspirations of growing Real Food by Dad into a enterprise on the same scale as Bakers Royale, which boasts more than 100,000 followers across several social media platforms, but he’s taking things one day at a time. Mostly, he’s in the blogging biz for his kids.
“Being a dad is the best thing in the world,” he said. “I want to spend time with them… it flies by so quickly. There’s nothing better. We’re really lucky.”
More bloggers who should be on your radar:
Why getting laid off was the best thing that ever happened to this food blogger
How a 20-year friendship blossomed into a gorgeous food blog
Meet the male food blogger who’s all about feminism
Who’s your favorite food blogger? Tell us below!
