It is impossible to ignore how much social media has changed the landscape of food media. At the risk of sounding like a grumpy old man, I can’t help but sometimes yearn for the days when written media was what drove the conversation around restaurants. This isn’t to say that social media has ruined the industry—in fact, it’s quite the opposite. Now, more than ever, there is an abundance of creative and well-researched food content on the internet—and I, as a food obsessive for my entire life—thoroughly enjoy the instant access that social media has granted us. But, as algorithms often drive the conversation instead of people, we are left with an over-saturated bubble of culinary storytelling. Some of which don’t tell a story at all.
When I was a young cook in Manhattan, I would rush home after my shift—sometimes not arriving home until three in the morning—to jot down the ideas in my head to post on a blog that no one read. I’d spend all shift cooking, simultaneously writing mental notes on how I would tell the story of Austin’s best barbecue or the reasoning behind my infatuation with a certain cheap beer. Sometimes, I’d write about the very shift I was working. This was 2017, which looking back, feels like the dead middle of the shift from written media toward video.
In the mid-2010s, cooking content specifically began to explode on YouTube. Long-form video was a great outlet for chefs and cooks who were particularly creative to express their skills outside of the restaurant. This space grew and remains popular today. When TikTok started to gain traction around 2018, short-form content quickly became the preferred form of media consumption for many. This brought to the table new ideas for videos—ones that hooked viewers right away and gave the whole, simplified story before any boredom could set in. It seemed that more and more people were choosing to watch 10 60-second videos instead of one 10-minute video.
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This slow shift towards short-form content coincides with a real-world purge of great food writers. Just recently, famed New York Times Food Critic Pete Wells announced his retirement. In the last six years, we’ve tragically lost important voices in dining such as Anthony Bourdain and Jonathan Gold. These were individuals who looked at food with objectivity and not as a collaboration effort, or as a way to score a free meal.
I understand the irony. I’m a food writer complaining that food writing isn’t as popular anymore, and I want to be clear that that’s not what I’m trying to do. I accept that as a journalist, storyteller—whatever you want to call it—you must adapt to an audience. I also understand that today, there are writers much greater than I that don’t have to meld, because they have carved out a space in the industry for their stories to shine.
Still, I can’t help but sometimes feel depressed when the algorithm feeds me what is, to put it bluntly, bad content. The utterly forced, high-definition, flash-on videos of food with captions that say little more than “Look at this giant burger!” or something to that effect. These elementary attempts are often rewarded with millions of views.
However, it’s not all bad. There are hundreds of creators out there putting forth valuable storytelling on the restaurant industry. These stories range from write-up-style Instagram Reels to stories about generational restaurants. So, whenever I begin to feel like social media is ruining the industry that I love so much, I choose to instead turn to the creators that I feel are producing the best value out there.
Rob Martinez Creates Videos About the Legends
Rob Martinez is a solo creator who uses video to tell the stories of America’s most legendary restaurants and people. He has amassed 684,000 followers across Instagram, TikTok and YouTube. Martinez’s content outlook is simple: to focus on the legends. “Part of my goal is to create content for businesses who can’t navigate the social media landscape. I don’t want the mom and pops of the world to get left behind because they don’t know how to send a DM, or because they can’t find it in their budget to pay somebody,” he tells me. “My content is about people and places and what they’re proud of.”
He navigates this outlook by traveling the country and focusing on one city or region at a time. Rather than turning to socials to see what the trendiest spots are, he instead reaches out to local writers and everyday people to ask them where he should go. This creates an authenticity in his videos that is palpable. Especially when so much in-authentic content exists.
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“I think my content is a bit different from a lot of folks. I’m not so interested in what is the best or trendiest. I think right now, with so many influencers, it feels hard to trust them,” says Martinez. “You don’t know who is or who isn’t being paid. The list is very short of who you can trust.”
Martinez also takes a people-centered approach to his storytelling, which means letting the subject talk freely. This creates authentic videos that showcase the personalities behind local favorites—which, if you ask me, helps to create a deeper connection that is often missed in social media, and is becoming harder to find in traditional journalism, too.
This genuinity can be seen in many of Martinez’s videos. In one he shot earlier this year at Lodi Pizza in Lodi, New Jersey, Owner Frank Scaturro is given free reign to talk about his business and his passion for pizza. “It’s a pride thing. You’re selling yourself through the pizza,” says Scaturro in the video. These are the kind of candid—and real—quotes that I find to be sorely missing in food media across the board.
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Martinez’s videos help to fill a gap in the space. “From when I started in 2016, there’s a lot more people watching and making content than ever before,” he tells me. “Today [with SEO] the most valuable things from traditional publishers are often lists—things that are easy to Google. So content creators have somewhat filled a gap for traditional reviews.”
But, with more people creating content, the harder it becomes to trust it. “The list is very short of people you can trust. If they’re not actively telling you your ethics… you can probably assume they don’t have any,” he chuckles. “Should I say that?” There’s truth there, though—social media has become a business, and many restaurants are willing to cough up large sums of money in exchange for advertisements in the form of short-form video. Of course, food writing isn’t safe from this either.
Joel Haas’ Diet of Michelin-Starred Restaurants
What about for people who love fine dining? You know, the Michelin-Starred tasting menus that employ every gastronomic trick in the book? This is where the chorus becomes split. Traditional journalism is still a massive driving force for fine dining with The Michelin Guide and World’s 50 Best being highly sought-after publications for chefs to work toward. For a long time, learning about this side of food was reserved for those who chose to read about it—or, for those who could afford to experience it themselves.
However, there’s a world of social media now dedicated to documenting these once-in-a-lifetime dining experiences. Joel Haas of High Speed Dining has amassed over one-million followers across socials by documenting his experiences eating at some of the world’s best restaurants. Since starting, he has eaten over 912 Michelin-Starred meals—a number I wouldn’t believe if his Instagram and Tik Tok didn’t have the receipts to prove it.
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One week, he’s in San Francisco posting videos of Three-Michelin-Star SingleThread. The next, he might be back home in DC documenting 20-plus courses at Jose Andres’ Minibar.
“It really started with TikTok coming out of the pandemic. I had been traveling and eating for years. I started documenting my meals to show off this incredible journey I was on,” says Haas of how his page came to be. “It was never about making money, I just was in this crazy kick of eating restaurant food almost every night and I wanted to share it with others.”
The allure of creating content for Haas lies in his past experience. He spent decades in the radio and entertainment business, even running the stand-up comedy for XM Radio prior to the Sirius merger. “I have a creative background—I spent 15 years running comedy content in audio. So, I took my past and applied it to the present with these videos.”
Haas also stresses the more laid-back attitude of social media in comparison to old-fashioned food criticism, “Social media influencers don’t necessarily need to understand what’s going on as much. A critic needs to know the vocabulary… the ingredients… the technique. Journalists need to put that into words and describe what’s going on. I don’t think you need to know nearly as much as a social media creator, you just need to put together an entertaining video.”
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Along with that sentiment is Haas’ declaration that what he does on social media is in no way food criticism. “I’m not a food critic. I don’t tell you where to go and what you should eat. I’m more of a guide. I tell you where I went and how great of a time I had. If you like what you see—great! You can go and experience it,” he says.
He describes what he’s been doing the last three years as a journey—one that he wants to show off. “You don’t see these high end restaurants as much because they don’t give out free meals, but I just go where I want,” Haas tells me. “I’m lucky. I’ve done well for myself and I can afford to pay for these meals.”
Therein lies the reason that, despite their status as some of the best restaurants on the globe, you don’t see as many IG Reels or TikToks of the Three-Star restaurants in the world. They have the capital to pay for content, but why would they? That being said, there is no shortage of press on those same establishments.
The Faceless Critic: Cesar Hernandez
There’s still a lot to be said about legit food writing. The kind that brings eyes to new spots, along with a series of different perspectives. Cesar Hernandez is the Associate Restaurant Critic for the San Francisco Chronicle. His work provides readers with an objective insight on the Bay Area dining scene—from taco trucks, to Salvadoran cocktail havens. But it’s the journey to now that caught my attention. Hernandez, who goes by fukufoodz on Instagram, originally started his page as a rejection of social media culture.
“I started writing in 2018. I used to be a freelancer in LA for LA Taco, doing boots on the ground journalism. I started this because, to be honest, I didn’t like a lot of the influencer culture. So, I started a page where I vowed to never show my face,” he tells me of his decision to remain visually anonymous—a practice he still sticks to today.
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By maintaining a level of anonymity, Hernandez not only ensures objectivism in his writing by refraining from relationships with chefs (something I am guilty of), but he also makes a statement that almost mocks influencer culture. He proves that a visible personality is not needed if what you bring to the table is great as is.
It’s not just social media that Hernandez expressed reservations about—he rejects much of traditional journalism in his writing as well. “I’m not an old school journalist, I didn’t go to journalism school. I didn’t come up traditionally. I cared a lot about food and culture and how they merge, though,” he says. “I saw all these places that traditional media just wasn’t covering.”
So, when Hernandez moved to The Bay with a new-found facelessness, he carved out a unique identity by flying in a separate direction from the Chronicle’s prior food criticism. “Our predecessor at the Chronicle was a critic for 30 years and he’d never write about the stuff we cover now,” says Hernandez. “The new world, post-pandemic adaptations in food.”
This “new world” for dining is a huge piece of the driving force behind the growth of social media, but writers like Hernandez still aren’t convinced that short-form video can capture the same authenticity as an article or written review. “What I like about traditional media is that you’re allowed to fully flesh out your ideas where in short form content, it’s harder. You have to think about if it’s engaging to an audience. Nuance. Are you going to accomplish these things in a short video?” he says. “At the same time, the eyes are on social media.”
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According to Hernandez, it’s not all bad—not even close. He speaks highly of several creators, specifically ones who use their platforms to uplift the businesses and communities that need the exposure the most.
And even as social media grows by the day, he’s still not convinced that it will ever truly replace traditional journalism. “I can’t say for sure that social media will replace it. It’s a watering down of the format sometimes because it has to be. It has to be more digestible [than writing],” he tells me. “At the end of the day, I’m still a journalist providing a service. You know what you’re getting. I’m not eating it in my car, it’s not about engagement or views and I’m not writing something just because I think it will be popular.”
Did Social Media Kill Food Writing?
I came into this with an assumption that yes, social media has killed food journalism, but really, it’s not that simple. As Hernandez put it, the eyes are on social media—this is an irrefutable fact. However, that doesn’t render writing worthless. It sometimes seems like a paradox: this constant battle for both content creators and writers to craft something that is not only seen by many, but valuable, too.
Whether you get your food content via video, digital media, print or some mix of the three, it cannot be denied that now, more than ever, there is a plentitude of content to choose from. This is the information age, after all. As consumers, we are gifted the ability to truly curate what we like to see. Is the algorithm always going to have your best interest in mind? No. But, ask yourself this: do the editors?
Consume what you enjoy, because there is an infinite amount of talent on both sides of the coin. And if you ask me, neither are going anywhere.
Peter Candia is the Food + Drink Editor at New Jersey Digest. A graduate of The Culinary Institute of America, Peter found a passion for writing midway through school and never looked back. He is a former line cook, server and bartender at top-rated restaurants in the tri-state area. In addition to food, Peter enjoys politics, music, sports and anything New Jersey.
