SEATTLE — After an afternoon spent sampling steak and drinking root beer on camera at an upscale downtown restaurant — for money, even — John Mills arrived, eventually, at an unpleasant memory.
The 18-year-old offensive lineman confided that he once witnessed the unthinkable: a fellow diner not only ordered steak well done, but did so with a cut of filet mignon.
“I don’t know how you do that to a steak,” Mills said. “It’s disgraceful, I think. It’s disrespectful.”
Mills lives on the other end of the preparation spectrum, preferring his favorite food be cooked rare, no “medium” about it, unless he gets distracted by his phone and leaves it on the grill too long. His mom, Jennifer, recalled one restaurant at which John’s order prompted the manager to seek explicit parental approval before proceeding.
They obliged, though in her own kitchen, Jennifer said, “I didn’t want to cook it rare, because it’s just gross — I mean, no! It’s just not OK.”
Bleeding or bone-dry, Mills’ lifelong appreciation for steak landed him squarely in the NIL wheelhouse with Washington’s new “Muggin’ with Mills” social-media series, in concert with university partners El Gaucho and PepsiCo (Mug root beer, John’s beverage of choice, is a Pepsi product).
The brainchild of Gibran Hamdan, the football program’s new creative director, the series will find Mills sampling a different cut from El Gaucho’s menu across eight episodes, all filmed on a single Monday last month at the restaurant’s Western Avenue location.