In early 2021, Los Angeles native and food connoisseur Kevin Noparvar was at a crossroads. Like so many other Americans, the 29-year-old was searching for a new creative outlet while the coronavirus pandemic brought life as he knew it to a halt. Noparvar had been sharing his love for his hometown’s food on his Instagram account @How.Kev.Eats for a few years, but wanted to shake up his content and try something different.
So he downloaded Tik Tok.
“I wanted to see what the hype was about,” he said.
Noparvar made an account in the first week of 2021 and soon became a Tik Tok convert like so many other Americans.
“Tik Tok is amazing as far as how it pushes content to you and how they figure out what you like and what you want to watch, while also showing you content that’s trending. I was like, ‘Wow this is so much better than Instagram…What if I just shifted my focus from Instagram to Tik Tok?’ So I started doing that.”
Kevin Noparvar, creator of @How.Kev.Eats
Noparvar didn’t have to wait long before his videos struck gold in Tik Tok’s unique algorithm. His first viral video came two weeks after he started making original content for Tik Tok, in which he reviewed a $50 burger made with filet mignon patties. He thought it was going to be the “most stupid thing” he ever put in his mouth but ended up being one of the best burgers he’s ever eaten.
The video hit 1 million views within a few days and it was soon evident Noparvar was anything but a one-hit-wonder.
His craving for something new was quenched– and he didn’t stop there. Since his first viral video, Noparvar has amassed almost 2 million followers and 77 million likes on the platform with the help of the app’s widespread popularity and Los Angeles’ iconic food scene as his backdrop.
PRE TIK TOK
Food is synonymous with Los Angeles. The City of Angels is a cultural hub, filled with nearly four million residents from a myriad of ethnicities, nationalities, and backgrounds. The diversity of the population and sprawling nature of the city has made way for one of the most exciting, heterogeneous, enthralling food scenes in the world to emerge.
Craving Asian food? Head east to the San Gabriel Valley, which Eater Los Angeles calls “America’s Asian Food Mecca.” How about an unforgettable taco experience? You can’t go wrong with Mariscos Jalisco, Los Cinco Puntos, and Tacos Y Birria La Unica– all located in Boyle Heights. Langer’s Delicatessen in the Westlake neighborhood is a Los Angeles institution, serving up some of the best pastrami sandwiches since 1947. Or you could head west to Beverly Hills to try Wolfgang Puck’s legendary Italian restaurant, Spago. Or maybe Matsuhisa, where chef Nobuyuki Matsuhisa’s sushi empire began.
“Everything that you think Los Angeles is– whether it’s avocado toast and juice cleanses or street food, late night taco trucks and bacon-wrapped hot dogs– it is all of that and more.”
Farley Elliott, Eater Los Angeles
Farley Elliott, senior editor at Eater Los Angeles and author of “Los Angeles Street Food: A History From Tamaleros to Taco Trucks,” wholeheartedly believes that Los Angeles has the best dining scene in America.
“We have the greatest concentration of so many cultures and obviously their related cuisines, whether that’s Cambodian, Armenian, Vietnamese, Thai, Mexican,” Elliott explained.
The food scene in LA encompasses nearly every cuisine under the sun, and each establishment offers something valuable and irreplaceable to it – whether it be a $3 birria taco or a $30 yellowtail sashimi. But with the city being 503 square miles with almost 30,000 restaurants, how does one even know where to begin?
For years, Angelenos relied on the food section of the L.A. Times, articles from food-centric publications like The Infatuation and Eater, or simply by word-of-mouth to discover restaurants to try across the city. And that method worked well.
But as we all know, the rise of social media has heavily impacted the world in a myriad of ways, one of which being how restaurant operators get the word out about their businesses.
“Los Angeles has really been at the forefront of the intersection of social media and food and food trends since basically day one,” Elliott explained.
“There are Facebook groups out in Santa Clarita that are 13,000 strong and can drive real numbers through the door for small businesses. We also, through Twitter, have had an entire generation of people chasing food trucks in that early Kobe barbecue era,” Elliott explained.
After the buzz of Twitter and Facebook dwindled, Instagram emerged as the new innovative and popular platform to share food and restaurants across Los Angeles. The Infatuation, a restaurant review website, was quick to jump on the Instagram bandwagon with their accounts @infatuation and @infatuation_la, which boast 769,000 and 283,000 followers, respectively. Andrew Steinthal, one of website’s founders, has credited the photo-sharing platform with playing a massive role in the growth of The Infatuation.
The Infatuation was not the only outlet who took to Instagram to share the love of food. In fact, many common Angelenos created their own accounts to document their culinary escapades. Mandi Mikasa, a senior at the University of Southern California, is one of them. She runs her own Instagram @FoodofLosAngels that boasts over 5000 followers.
“Instagram was my platform of choice because of its accessibility and convenience… My account can easily be shared by my friends and I like how Instagram allows creators to have a tight-knit community with their followers.”
Mandi Mikasa, creator of @FoodOfLosAngels
But just like Twitter and Facebook took a backseat to Instagram, it was only time before a new medium of sharing the amazing food of Los Angeles was bound to disrupt the status quo.
And in 2020, it happened. Tik Tok took over.
TIK TOK ERA
The video-focused social media platform took the United States by storm in 2020, increasing its American user base by 85.3 percent compared to the year prior. It quickly became one of the most popular social platforms in the country, drawing users in with its allure and encapsulating their attention with its addictive nature and meticulous algorithm.
One component of Tik Tok that differentiates it from other social platforms is its virality potential. Any user on the app can post a video that makes its way into the algorithm– commonly known as the “For You Page” – and wrack up hundreds of thousands of views in minutes, regardless of how many followers they have. This has paved the way for average users to “blow up” on the app without even trying.
So where does food fit into all this? Food influencers and reviewers are no strangers to social media, and the rise of Tik Tok inspired a few– like Noparvar– to take their passion over to the mystical new app to play around with sharing food with an experimental approach.
Adam Alper, a Los Angeles native, started his food account @RickLox on Instagram in 2018. He didn’t take it seriously at first and thought of it more as an enjoyable side gig while he worked full-time as the head of a social media marketing agency. But when the pandemic hit, a lot of his agency work was put on hold, which gave him more time to focus on his side gig and grow his following.
Like Noparvar, Alper saw Tik Tok growing in popularity and decided to give it a try, posting his first food review video to the app in August 2020. A year and a half later, he’s amassed almost 160,000 followers and 3.9 million likes on the app. He credits Tik Tok’s virality for a lot of his success.
“[On Tik Tok], unlike an Instagram or other platforms, your potential to reach so many more people beyond just your following is there, so I was able to grow really quickly.”
Alper reviews a range of food and restaurants on his account, from breakfast burritos to tomahawk ribeyes and from L.A. staples like Mel’s Drive-In to brand new spots like Horses on Sunset.
His M.O. is a video filled with clips of what he ate and drank at the restaurant with an enthusiastic voiceover recap and review behind it, culminating in giving the spot a “Lox Level” rating. Alper wholeheartedly believes that Tik Tok creators like himself have helped the L.A. food scene thrive with their reach.
“When people post a video it has the potential to really blow up a restaurant. a food pop-up, a chef… and that’s fundamental for the food scene here in Los Angeles,” Alper explained.
Tik Tok skyrocketed Noparvar to foodie fame and gave Alper a major platform to share his favorite L.A. eats, but they aren’t the only ones benefiting from their videos. The combination of their cult followings and Tik Tok’s wide-reaching algorithm result in hundreds of thousands of people watching entrancing content about a variety of restaurants across Los Angeles, which serves as inspiration to try them out themselves.
Daughter’s Deli in West Hollywood and sandwich pop-up Carla Cafe are a few spots that have reaped the benefits of getting a positive review from Tik Tok creator.
Noparvar recalls how he posted a great review of the fried chicken sandwich from Daughter’s Deli on his Tik Tok which gained a lot of traction. He gave it a rating of 9.4 out of 10, one of the highest he’s given to this day. The deli normally sold about 30 fried chicken sandwiches per day, but after Noparvar’s video, the owner reached out and told him that they sold out of 300 sandwiches for three days straight.
Avi Ahdoot, the owner of Carla Cafe, is no stranger to the dynamic combination of food and social media. He started the sandwich company during the pandemic from his childhood kitchen after spending weeks concocting the perfect garlic aioli chicken sandwich. His family and friends were so obsessed with his creation that he decided to experiment with a few other sandwich types and open a tri-weekly pop-up shop out of Bootsy Bellows nightclub on the Sunset Strip in West Hollywood.
To secure a sandwich, customers have to follow Carla Cafe’s private Instagram account, direct message them for a link to purchase one, and choose a time slot for pick up– all before they sell out. It’s a quintessential 21st century business model that combines fascination and mystery– it’s an embodiment of the “if you know, you know” mentality that many customers value.
While Carla’s main platform is Instagram, Ahdoot is incredibly thankful for Tik Tok’s hand in spreading the word about his business.
“The effect of Tik Tok creators posting about [Carla Cafe] is wild in how wide of a net it captures,” Ahdoot explained. “It’s hard for us to measure the total reach but I know content that food reviewers have posted about us definitely reached a nationwide audience that we hadn’t hit before.”
In February, Tik Tok star Christina Najjar– colloquially known as her username @Tinx– posted a rave review of Carla Cafe’s Tuna Chop Salad, saying it was the best tuna salad she’s ever had in her life. Though Tinx’s content isn’t entirely about food, the video went viral and influenced hundreds of people to try the salad for themselves.
“The Tinx post was by far the most effective single post by any influencer or celebrity,” Ahdoot said. “She single handedly shifted the perception of our brand from a sandwich company to a sandwich and salad company. Before Tinx’s post we’d sell about 8-12 salads per day… now we sell close to 100 salads every drop and it’s now a top two selling item on our menu.”
But what makes the opinions of these average Angelenos with no background in food reviewing trustworthy and reliable to those who watch their videos? Noparvar thinks it all boils down to comfort and relatability.
“People want to see a person… people want a trusted singular source of information,” he said. “If you’re on Tik Tok and you see a food reviewer and they share the same perspective on food as you do, you’re going to trust that person more than you trust an article or brand… because a brand isn’t going to speak to you the way a person does.”
Natalie Redington, a Los Angeles native and recent graduate of the University of Southern California, decided to start sharing her love for the L.A. food scene on her personal Tik Tok almost two years ago.
The next wave of the Los Angeles food scene has just begun, but it is far from over. As long as Tik Tok remains popular and creators like Alper, Noparvar and Redington continue to create their honest, addictive and reliable content, the food landscape in the City of Angels will continue to evolve and reach more people than ever– that is, until a new form of social media emerges and shakes things up once again.