Pasta Chef Makes Raw Gnocchi at 30,000 Feet, Internet Still Mad

There’s a certain breed of content creator who views the constraints of modern life as mere suggestions—obstacles to be overcome in pursuit of the perfect viral moment. Pasta chef Katie Brooks, who posts as @buonapastaclub on TikTok, fits that mold perfectly. In September 2025, she boarded a flight with flour, water, a bowl, a dough scraper, and a pasta stamping tool in her carry-on, then proceeded to knead dough mid-air while flour visibly drifted toward nearby passengers, assembling a plate of raw gnocchi at cruising altitude.

The video, captioned“POV: You hate airplane food so you make it yourself,”racked up nearly 10 million views on its original run. It’s a teaching moment, Brooks insisted—a way to demonstrate to beginners that pasta is so easy, anyone can do it, even at 35,000 feet. Her recipe for one serving: half a cup of fine semolina and 100 milliliters of warm water. No egg required. No cooking required, apparently.

But Reddit’s r/StupidFood found the video in 2026, and with it came the backlash that never quite died.“Why do we want raw, unsauced gnocchi on a flight? Why do we want it anywhere?”one commenter asked, articulating what many were thinking. Another zeroed in on the optics:“But you gotta shove your camera in the flight attendant’s face though, cause everyone loves being filmed while working.”It’s the kind of critique that cuts deeper than mere food snobbery—it’s about the clash between content creation and basic courtesy in shared spaces.

Brooks, who runs pasta-making classes and workshops from San Diego and was preparing to release a cookbook titled“Buona Pasta,”addressed the criticism head-on in her resurfaced post. She’s a legitimate educator, not just a chaos agent chasing clicks. But that defense glosses over the real issue: the video works precisely because it’s outrageous. A woman teaching pasta fundamentals in her kitchen would get a fraction of the engagement. The spectacle of doing it on an airplane—flour clouds and all—is the whole point.

What’s worth noting is that not everyone in the comments piled on. One person pointed out the actual physics problem: water on an airplane boils at around 197F and would likely be under 180F by the time you’d use it, making the whole endeavor even more impractical. Another defender pushed back on the vitriol itself, noting that it’s“stupid food, not stupid people.”Fair point. But there’s a difference between pushing culinary boundaries and turning your fellow passengers into unwilling extras in your educational content.