Composite: Guardian Design/Getty Images View image in fullscreen Composite: Guardian Design/Getty Images The long read Restaurants ‘A crisis of authenticity’: the truth about food influencers Instagrammers have upended the British restaurant scene, and amassed followings in the millions. But has their moment already passed?
In 2017, two aspiring YouTubers going by the name Topjaw published a video posing the London foodie’s most important question: what to eat in Chinatown ? They enlisted the help of longtime Instagrammer Kar-Shing Tong (better known by his username @ks_ate_here ), who took them on a lovingly curated loop of the neighbourhood. Cantonese siu mei duck at Four Seasons, Chongqing-style handmade noodles at the now defunct Little Wooden Hut, and Barshu on Frith Street, where they decadently cracked a whole crab for the camera. Any of the 100,000-odd viewers who watched it at the time would be well served by its responsible (if unspectacular) recommendations. But in retrospect, the video may be of more interest to historians. In its unassuming and rapidly cut seven minutes, you can almost see the tectonic plates of the food world begin to shift.
Tong is the elder statesman: the @ks_ate_here account began in the social media dark ages, first on Twitter then on an Instagram that was dominated by static photography. He’s in his element in the video, dutifully explaining the history and technique behind the dishes. He is relaxed and affable in front of the camera, but in his own work he doesn’t show his face often – it just wasn’t the style. Topjaw is something different. Nine years ago, it was still embryonic: host Jesse Burgess sweating profusely at any hint of chilli, cameraman Will Warr unable to use chopsticks. But the formula was there. The constant checking in to see if what they’re eating truly is “the best”. Even doubled over from the heat of a spicy fish soup, Burgess’s eyes always find the camera. He holds out food for inspection and addresses the imagined viewer. The audience is out there. “KS has 40,000 Instagram followers! 40,000!” Burgess says, pointing at Tong with aspirational glee.
Now, Topjaw – buoyed partly by their own charms and partly by the tech industry’s hard turn to short-form video – has 1.7 million followers across the major platforms. But it’s not a singular phenomenon. The algorithm now serves up an influencer for every genre of restaurant, from halal to fine dining. The most popular account in the UK – with 2.4 million followers on Instagram and 1.2 million on TikTok – is Eating With Tod, featuring the preternaturally excitable Toby Inskip, who rubs his hands together and hangs his mouth open in gluttonous ecstasy behind gargantuan mounds of roasted and fried meats. Rollin Lee goes deep on Korean food and culture. The landscape skews depressingly male among the largest accounts, but Lylaa Ali Shaikh of @SaltandShaikh promises a guide to the “ethnic hot girl spots in London”, while Kate Ovens mixes restaurant reviews with the occasional – stunningly impressive – competitive eating challenge.
The rise of these influencers, in the half-decade since the pandemic, initially caught the restaurant world off-guard. Asma Khan told me that her Soho restaurant, Darjeeling Express, was busy for four months after appearing in a Topjaw video. Man Hon Luk, of Hon’s BBQ, said that, in one day, 200 people came to his pop-up in Hackney after he was featured on Inskip’s “Best BBQ” series. The rise of the food infl…