Chef Billy: A Passion for Food and Jesus

With his upcoming restaurant, viral chef Billy Parisi is no longer a statistic—he’s back in the food industry to stay

by Anneliese Rider / August 15, 2025

“Seventy-five percent of you won’t be in this business within four years of graduation,” Billy says, repeating the chef’s words on Billy’s first day of culinary school.

Now, more than 25 years later, Billy tells how he did, in fact, quit within four years of graduation—but he’s back in the game with a viral social media presence, a soon-to-open Italian restaurant, and an unquenchable passion for introducing people to his best friend: Jesus Christ.

‘I hated the food industry’

Billy Parisi’s first restaurant job was as a dishwasher in St. Louis—but he graduated from high school with sights set on becoming a chef and moved to Arizona to attend the former Scottsdale Culinary Institute.

Determined to stick it out regardless of the depressing statistics, Billy graduated from culinary school in 2000 and returned to St. Louis, where he spent three years as a line cook, a sous chef, and eventually an executive chef.

And he hated it.

“It was May and we got a little bit busy. The owner was there and we kept telling him, ‘Go, go, we got it,’” Billy recounts. But the restaurant owner didn’t leave, instead skipping his son’s high school graduation. “I went home that night thinking, My dad was there for everything … Am I going to be sweating over a cutting board at 60 and missing half my life?”

So in 2003, Billy traded his apron for more education at the University of Missouri. He earned his BA in Communications and moved to Chicago, where he started a small media company.

But soon, Billy grew tired of the crowds—"There were more people on my block than the entire town I grew up in”—and felt something was missing.

When his mother suggested church, Billy wasn’t interested. His childhood church memories were not positive: lots of kneeling at the Catholic church where the family went until he was 11, and being picked on at the evangelical church they attended later.

But he took his mom’s advice and went anyways, visiting Park Community Church in downtown Chicago. The familiarity of church was comforting, and he started attending and even volunteering with the media team. One day, in 2008, Jesus Christ gripped Billy’s heart.

“I just had this moment,” Billy remembers. As he listened to the pastor, it all clicked. “I’m thinking, I believe absolutely everything about this … Jesus is who he said he is.”

Suddenly, all Billy wanted to do was be at church and share the gospel with everyone. A month later, he met Lindsay at a video shoot for his media company.

“There’s this beautiful girl, and I’m like, Okay, this is going to be the model for the video. She’s so beautiful, no way she’s ever going to think anything about me,” Billy says. But he learned she was a nurse, and she was searching for the truth. “I didn’t really know how to evangelize to her other than to tell her that Jesus loved her, I was so new to it.”

He invited her to church, she accepted Jesus as her Savior, and in 2010 they were married. When Lindsay became pregnant in 2012, Billy saw the appeal of stable employment, so he got a job at Reynolds Consumer Products in the northern suburbs of Chicago.

‘I feel like I’m stealing from a church’

With a new daily commute, Billy suddenly had lots of driving time. His mom recommended Moody Radio.

Everything about it was uplifting, was encouraging,” Billy says. “It’s better than listening to whatever’s on the radio now: just junk, and not good for my soul!

Billy was hooked. As a new Christian, he’d just learned about the missionary concept of going and sending, and one day, during Fall Share 2012, Billy was convicted.

“They’re reading testimonies, and it was like, I feel like I’m stealing from a church. All I do is listen to this and I don’t give anything,” Billy recalls. “I understand the gospel is free, but these people are actually on the ground.”

What he’d been learning about being a missionary suddenly made sense.

“I could be a sender, so to speak. I could be a giver,” Billy says, and he started making a monthly gift. “When you give to Moody Radio, you feel part of it, because you’re like, ‘I’m not on the ground with you guys, but I’m helping you guys get on the ground.”

For more than 13 years, Billy has given and kept his car tuned to Moody Radio, no matter who he’s driving.

“You can always trust that it’s going to be safe for your family and it’s going to be uplifting,” Billy says. “We’ll all be in the car as a family and everyone knows the song and we’re all singing.”

Even after moving to Indiana in 2020, Billy is still an avid listener—whether it’s Karl & Crew in the mornings, Equipped with Chris Brooks, Roy Patterson on Urban Praise, or any of the many programs.

“You see God working in such tangible ways,” Billy says, talking about the men’s program he started at his church, based on the Better Man curriculum that he heard about from Karl. “Listening to Karl & Crew in the morning every day on the way to work, they’re on the move too.”

Getting back in the kitchen

While working at Reynolds, Billy was creating recipe videos on the side for grocery stores, and developing his own Facebook page with cooking content—and in 2013, Billy made a crazy goal: Get 100,000 followers.

“So I grow, I grow, I grow,” Billy says, and before long, he reached his goal. “All of a sudden in 2013, companies are calling like, ‘Hey, would you use this product?’”

In 2014, with more than 200,000 Facebook followers, Billy was tired of long hours away from his wife and two-year-old daughter, Olivia, who was already presenting signs of severe ADHD. In a leap of faith, he quit his job and started focusing on creating videos, pictures, and recipe development for food companies. It was a slow start, but then the floodgates opened.

“Kraft is calling, ConAgra is calling, Butterball Turkey, McCormick—they’re like, ‘Keep going. We need thirty recipes for our website. We need pictures. We need videos,’” Billy says. “God’s faithfulness and providence is just unmatched. I don’t know what else to say.”

At first, Billy didn’t understand why he was suddenly in such high demand. Then he figured it out: with a background in culinary arts AND communication, Billy could do alone what most companies needed multiple people for.

“They ended up calling it Billy Bucks because I was so cheap.”

After a few years of producing content for other companies, Billy really focused on his own YouTube and Facebook, and his website, billyparisi.com.

“And then COVID-19 hits and everyone needs to learn how to cook because no one can leave their house,” Billy says, chuckling.

Billy created a sourdough bread tutorial and put it on YouTube. The video went viral. Billy and the family moved to Crown Point, and Billy’s online presence boomed. He opened a studio and, in 2022, officially stepped out on his own.

Now, he’s firmly back in the food industry, and this time, he loves it. With more than a million Facebook followers, and almost a million on YouTube, Billy’s on track to open his own Italian restaurant in October 2025.

Parisi’s, with menu items based on his family heritage—like Aunt Kathy’s Caponata and Papa Bill’s Giant Meatball—will be more than just a place to eat.

“The goal is to be a blessing in any way to people that work there and come in … I’m just itching to walk by a table and hear someone spreading the gospel,” Billy says. “I hope people come to Christ over conversations while eating delicious pasta.”

Even in the challenges—like 180˚ career changes, stepping into an uncertain future, and navigating life with a daughter who deals with severe ADHD—Billy’s main takeaway has been God’s faithfulness.

“In one hundred percent of instances in my life, whether it’s by desire or not, God has been faithful and God has shown up,” Billy says. “And whether it’s my desired outcome or his desired outcome, I just want to bring glory to God.”