At this point, there’s no denying that Keith Lee is among the country’s most influential food critics. A former MMA fighter who now commands more than 17 million followers on TikTok, Lee is known for his laid-back restaurant reviews, generally delivered from the front seat of his car, in which he evaluates the food from mom-and-pop restaurants of all kinds. As he travels the country eating at these restaurants, often accompanied by his wife Ronni and other family members, Lee’s built his own brand of family-run business.
He’s also become a self-appointed champion for those independent restaurants, which frequently end up with lines of customers out the door after Lee posts a positive review. Now, he’s taking his restaurant advocacy one step further with a new partnership with point-of-sale platform Toast. In the coming weeks, Lee and Toast will give out $150,000 in cash prizes to three “exceptional” independent restaurants, nominated by their fans on social media.
Ahead of the partnership, Eater sat down with Lee to talk about how his life has changed in his food critic era, how he navigates the temperamental ire of internet commenters, and how he plans to use everything he’s learned at the restaurants he’s reviewed to open his own someday.
Eater: What have the last couple of years been like for you as you’ve adjusted to this new reality of being the internet’s favorite food critic?
Keith Lee: I live a very simple life. I’m always with my kids and my family, so I don’t really notice it until I go outside and people react differently than I thought they would. But it’s a blessing. The biggest difference for me now is that we’ve been blessed enough to buy a house, and I can pass something down to my children. We’re becoming more business-savvy and financially literate. I think that’s really the biggest difference. Other than that, I’m still Keith.
Your platform is very focused on highlighting small, independent restaurants. Was that always your plan?
Yes. I’ve always viewed myself as a small business. When you’re a professional fighter, you’re an independent contractor, and you have to fund everything. From training for a fight, to food that you have to buy, to training equipment, you pay for all of that. It’s very similar when it comes to running a small business, like a restaurant. When I initially started making videos on social media, it was me cooking for my wife, and we were trying to figure out where the money would come from for me to buy the food to make the food videos.
Then, when I started doing food reviews, I was just recording myself at restaurants I would go to anyway, and those just so happened to be the family-owned places. I wasn’t going to chains or fast-food places. As I started to learn the business side of things, I learned that these restaurants were being charged fees from people who did reviews or promoted the restaurant, and we chose to do the complete opposite. I understand that the people behind these restaurants are families, people who are trying to make enough to send their kids to school, and everything’s coming out of pocket.
Now that you’ve sort of appointed yourself as a champion for these independent restaurants, do you ever feel any pressure to make sure that you’re doing them justice?
At times, but I try to keep it in perspective. I equate it to my fighting career, and there’s no more pressure than having to stand across from somebody and getting punched in the face. So in that regard, doing food reviews is a lot easier.
What about the expectations from your 17 million followers on TikTok? Does that ever get heavy?
Yes and no. Like with anything on the internet, the scrutiny on you or the way that people view you is changing every other minute. So it doesn’t necessarily stick for me. One minute they want you to perform a certain way, and the next second, they want you to perform a different way. As long as I stay myself, and I stay grounded and true to who I am, I think everything’s going to happen the way it’s supposed to. As long as I stay praying, I’m going to be where I’m supposed to be.
Do you think that approach of staying true to yourself and true to what you like to do has helped you avoid some of the pitfalls and controversies that other influencers find themselves involved in?
I think so, but it’s kind of a yes and no. The internet is forever finding things to be upset at, and that’s something that’s basically inevitable. It comes with the territory. I don’t think we’ve necessarily stayed away from all the issues and the controversy, but I’ve definitely stayed away from a lot of it because I keep to myself. I’m not necessarily in the mix or in the “influencer scene.”
When you go to a new city, you’re inundated with thousands of restaurant recommendations from your fans. How do you sort through all those recommendations to actually find the hidden gems?
We’re actually getting tens of thousands of recommendations, not thousands. We try to vet the comments by doing our own research, but we also just kind of go where we’re led. But now that we have the responsibility of this platform, I do reach out to people in each city and have conversations where we kind of vet the list with people who have experience in those cities. But for the most part, I just pray about it and go where I feel like I’m supposed to go.
Was that a lesson you learned recently? To connect with people who actually live in a city to make sure that you’re getting the full picture of its dining scene?
It was something that was suggested to us from the very beginning. But with more hands in the pot, more drama is a possibility, and that’s why we didn’t do it initially. I didn’t want there to be an issue where we go to a restaurant that’s directly recommended by someone, we tell the internet who recommended the restaurant, and we end up having a bad experience. That person will get the brunt of the internet’s wrath, right? I really wanted to avoid that, because we all know how the internet’s mob mentality can be at times.
When you were interviewed at South by Southwest a couple of weeks ago, you mentioned that you might like to open your own restaurant someday. What have you learned from all the places you’ve visited that you’d want to apply in your own restaurant?
The experience of being able to meet so many different people from different cultures and backgrounds has been so special. We go to restaurants almost every other day, and it’s very important to us to look beyond the food at the journey that these people are going on. That experience can’t be bought, in my opinion, and there’s not a lot of people who are able to have that experience without being a chef or owning their own restaurant. I hope I can take all of that into my own place, because I know the restaurant industry is tough, and we’re going to have to take some lumps. It’s one thing to eat at a restaurant and know restaurant people, it’s another thing to actually do it. I have no doubt that when we do open a restaurant, we’ll still be extremely novice, but with the lessons that we’ve learned and the connections we’ve been able to make with people, I feel like we’ve built a foundation for success, and I can’t wait.
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