Food and drink is our bread and butter. Content creation is too. Bread and butter is also our bread and butter, but that’s neither here nor there. Because we love food and social media, this week we’ll be going over our favorite food creators from TikTok, why they’re successful, and what we love about them. Here are our Top 5 Food Content Creators for 2023.
Honorable mention: Tanara
Tanara is known for her TikTok’s of “Everybody’s so creative,” highlighting some of the wildest recipes and worst cooking you’ll ever see. Her videos are always funny and highlight the biggest not to do’s in the kitchen. Gordon Ramsay always tells you the best flavors to pair together, but she’ll show you the absolute worst. Hotdog pizza? No. Chocolate ground beef? No. She keeps all the wanna-be food influencers in check while creating great entertainment value. Since she doesn’t create food or showcase good recipes, we decided not to rank her on the list, but the content she creates is good enough that she deserves recognition.
Number 5: Grandma Lynja
Everyone’s favorite TikTok grandma showcases delicious meals, great recipes, and genius kitchen hacks. Her food recipes are easy to follow and her food is top-tier. Every video is worth a watch for her fun effects, great sounds, and use of trends. Overall, her content is great and so is the food she cooks. Now, she is using her platform for product merchandising, cookbooks, and clothes. Grandma Lynja deserves a spot on this list for all of these reasons and more, but we’ve put her in the five spot because she doesn’t have the same hold on TikTok she did a few years ago. Although the videos are great and the recipes are easy to recreate, she doesn’t dominate the fyp and bring the same impact to TikTok she has in years past. But all that said, we still love the entertainment she brings, the food she cooks, and the recipes we’ve recreated.
Our favorite TikTok from Lynja this year is her cooking dinosaur video for a tomahawk steak for its well-cooked steak and great effects. It was funny, relatable, and mixed content we all love from other channels with a delicious steak.
Number 4: Gordon Ramsay
Of course, Gordon Ramsay is the king of the kitchen from his countless Michelin Star restaurants and famous cooking shows like Hells Kitchen and Master Chef, but his Tok Tok game is nothing to turn your nose at. His account has all types of content from teaching people to cook, making his favorite recipes, duetting popular videos, and marketing for his many TV shows. Gordon Ramsay is great entertainment on TV and he brings the same energy to his TikTok: roasting people for bad technique when their video goes viral, encouraging young home cooks to pursue their passion, and making great food with ease. His account is a one-stop shop for all things food whether you want to make an easy dinner from your pantry, make an elaborate meal, or be entertained by his TV shows or duets. Because of his high status in the kitchen and the variety of content he posts, it would be a crime to not include him on this list. However, for those very same reasons, we’re giving him the number four spot to highlight some of the creators that have grown on TikTok or made a bigger impact on the platform itself.
Our favorite Gordon Ramsay TikTok is his reaction to Lazy Pot Noodles beef Wellington where he said, “Your dorm room’s just become the poshest restaurant in the world.” The connections to the other creators tie it together well, and him complimenting his signature dish being cooked in a toaster oven was a sight.
Number 3: Susi Vidal
Better known as “Susi Pesto,” this content creator has had a massive impact on TikTok in the last few months for her video on how to make homemade pesto. Although very few people saw far enough into the video to see the actual pesto recipe, almost every TikTok user knows her from the “call me crazy if you want, but I’ve never liked store-bought pesto,” line that cooked up thousands of stitches of wild stories people have experienced from their life. Usually poking fun that not liking store-bought pesto is not that crazy, but Susi herself took advantage of the moment and made her own video on it. This is what put her on our radar, but she deserves her spot on this list for reasons far outside that. What’s even crazier than not liking store-bought pesto is the seemingly endless recipes she chefs up on her TikTok that look and taste incredible. She tells good stories, she makes good food, and her content is always well done. In addition to recipes, she also rates drinks from across the country and social media.
Our favorite TikTok from her has to of course be the video that started it all; Susi making her homemade pesto. However, our favorite recipe she showed us is her classic Tuscan chicken. It’s creamy, easy, and delicious.
Number 2: Kieth Lee
Kieth Lee’s impact on both the food community and social media is massive. He reviews and rates restaurants that are in need of help and not only puts them on the map but blows them up to a level of success that is unrivaled. He is unwaveringly positive and believes in blessings, kindness, and true human experience. He doesn’t want special treatment, and he does his best to make sure the experience he rates is the same one a regular guest will have. Recently, he did a trip to Atlanta where he put a lot of their restaurant culture on blast for poor customer service and odd rules but did it all in a polite and easily digestible way. When he reviews a restaurant, they can expect millions of views and hundreds of people at their door on a daily basis. Kieth Lee is not just a food reviewer on TikTok, but he is a staple and purveyor of culture on the platform. His reach is so large my mother, who does not have TikTok and does not keep up with pop culture or trends, knows his name and knows what he is about. Because of his massive impact, completely honest reviews, and prevalence on the For You page, Kieth Lee is very deserving of a spot on this list.
Our favorite Kieth Lee Tik Tok came from just last week when he went to The Real Milk and Honey in Atlanta, and, for the first time, came back with no bags. He highlighted their weird rules and preferential treatment while starting an explosive discussion on Atlanta’s restaurants.
Number 1: Lazy Pot Noodles
Better known as the dorm chef, we love Lazy Pot Noodles for the incredible food they whip up on a twin-size mattress with the basic utensils and no real kitchen. Most meals are one pot in a pressure cooker or rice steamer, with the occasional electric stove or other hardware. The content is well made and the meals look phenomenal. On top of great food and better technique, Lazy Pot Noodles always has their laptop in the background to watch a show that we have both taken notes on. We love to cook and we love to watch TV, and we have both taken recipes from Lazy Pot Noodles and TV recommendations. Although they have just become popular this year, the impact they’ve had on the platform makes them very deserving of this list. Gordon Ramsay himself did a stitch with Lazy Pot Noodles making beef Wellington in a dorm with these basic kitchen appliances, and Ramsay commended Lazy Pot Noodles on their amazing technique and stellar results for the dish Ramsay is best known for. This technique, quality, and entertainment value are the reason that we have put Lazy Pot Noodles on this list. As college students ourselves, we understand and respect the commitment and effort she’s putting in, so we gave them the number 1 spot. In addition to our ranking, we also want to call them the largest star of this year because of the rapid growth the page has seen.
Our favorite Lazy Pot Noodles TikTok is hands down the beef Wellington video. It was a flawless end result made from budget kitchen appliances in a dorm room. The video was good, and the food was better.
There are so many great content creators in the food realm that we didn’t get to cover that we would have loved to, but these were the ones we chose for their size and impact on the platform. Jocelyn loves Brialem for how real she, is and I love TRUFF Hot Sauce for the doubling eggs and making pasta daily. Unfortunately, the competition was stiff and we had to cut more names that deserved recognition.
