Hum: I tried the viral 'Cucumber Boy' salad. It lives up to the hype
Ottawa-based TikTok sensation Logan Moffitt impressed the Citizen's restaurant critic, for more reasons than one.

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Logan Moffitt? Never heard of him, until Thursday, that is. Before then, I was oblivious to the Ottawa content creator’s myriad cooking videos, as I am not one of his five million followers on TikTok. I am not on TikTok. I. Am. Too. Old.
But this week, I learned from more social media-savvy colleagues, and indeed from a New York Times food-section story, that Moffitt, who is just 23, is an online phenomenon whose snappy clips are the toast of TikTok and have even earned him the nickname Cucumber Boy. This summer, the west-end Ottawa native and recent University of Ottawa grad has been entrancing a viewership in the seven and even eight figures with videos purporting to show just how tasty a well-dressed cucumber can be.
“You should be the judge of that,” my boss said to me.
Well OK, then. It’s more common for me to review a Lansdowne Park fine-dining establishment where the ostentatious seafood tower goes for $300 or the toothsome Korean fried chicken served from the back of a Merivale Road grocery store. But by special request, I’ll assess the cooking of a home cook (and internet darling) whose catchphrases are “Sometimes you need to eat an entire cucumber” and “MSG, obviously.”
I met Moffitt at his home as he whipped up a cucumber salad with casual aplomb and in record time.
With a razor-sharp mandoline, he sliced the long, green fruit into thin discs that fell straight into a plastic, see-through takeout container. Then, without going to the trouble of measuring, he tossed in peanut butter, soy sauce, a grated garlic clove, chili crunch, sesame oil, sesame seeds, and “MSG, obviously.”
After snapping the container’s lid into place, Moffitt gave it a long, vigorous shake. Once everything was well-mixed, we dug in.
The cucumber concoction was as delicious as I’d hoped and expected. Moffitt was freestyling in an Asian-ish way with staples that I too have in my pantry, MSG included, to bathe the crunchy cukes in a mix of salty, nutty, spicy, high-umami goodness.
His salad wasn’t high-concept or sophisticated or even that surprising. Nor was it meant to be. Moffitt simply proved, as he has in other videos, that extremely simple, extremely quick-to-make food involving a single fresh ingredient or two and a fridge well-stocked with condiments can be extremely satisfying.

All told, I was impressed. Not just by the Moffitt’s dish, but by his day-in, day-out dedication to creating cucumber-themed content. One recipe does not constitute a phenomenon. But an account teeming with consistently engaging clips does.
I was also impressed by Moffitt’s obvious enthusiasm for cooking and inspiring others to cook. Not that Moffitt needs to scrimp and save, given the lucrative paid partnerships that his TikTok stardom has attracted, but he made the point to me that ordering food via Uber Eats or DoorDash is a bad, expensive habit.
As the father of a 20-something who isn’t making Moffitt’s salads, I can only say, “Ahem.”
For that matter, I might have to stock up on some cucumbers myself.
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