Can Restaurants Preserve Presence in the Age of Virality?
Growing up in London, food always served as a way to trace invisible lines back to places I had never lived but was curious to discover. Mid-week nights weren’t complete without hot meals from our local Chinese, and Saturdays meant that my parents would come home from weddings with enough jollof rice and cake to feed the masses (but successfully devoured by two little girls). In the Big Smoke is an environment you can explore and educate yourself on food. Being raised in a diasporic community only amplified this experience.
Acting as a powerful anchor for many, the attention economy has somewhat changed how we think about cuisine. Does Tod have authority over the best Indian? Are West-African tapas a success of cultural mingling? Are hipsters taking the piss or starting a conversation on how to modernise a multicultural food landscape? In the age of virality, we’re toeing the line between preserving cultural presence and slowly diluting it.
Photo by Hannah Tjaden
Major cities often experience high rates of cultural blending. Bangladeshi communities gather around Brick Lane whilst Nigerians populate Peckham High Street. Little Portugal serves as one of the city’s best-kept secrets, and the richness of Turkish culture can be found in pockets of North and East London. Melting pots, therefore, have a lust for diverse culinary offerings. More than ever, cooking is a playful escape and grounds for physical, digital, and culinary experimentation. Chefs who straddle various cultures call into question the notion of authenticity and adjust to modern appetites.
Though evolving, subtle racism is clear-cut in the industry. Ethnic food remains on the sidelines of haute cuisine and opinion leaders have remained overwhelmingly white. It’s then hardly surprising the UK only awarded its first Black female Michelin-star chef, Naija’s own Adejoké Bakare, in 2024. She steers the ship at Chishuru, a restaurant she deliberately calls “West African” to better describe the inter and intracontinental influences of her menu.
Post-Covid, there has been a huge shift in this market, with younger restaurateurs reclaiming their heritage through food. Chuku’s is capitalising on small plates culture, and the infamous BeauBeaus serves global delicacies alongside matcha and carrot cake. Taiwanese institution Bao’s multiverse brings a fresh view to loyalty experiences. Ziad Halub and Farsin Rabiee take over E5 Bakehouse for their hotly anticipated supper clubs, and Rahel Stephanie has become an authority in what it means to connect with culture and community, acclaimed by institutions like the Financial Times, Dazed, and Vogue. A sense of imagination isn’t limited to menu choices, but how these places platform and market themselves. They’re gutsy and pioneering, partnering with creative brains across tech, art, and fashion to sensually showcase how they’re reclaiming these spaces and drawing new audiences to appreciate cultures that were once overlooked. Just look at publications like Slop and Toothsome, encouraging readers to savour the beauty of produce and the chaos of the food industry itself.
Photo by Andrew Bennett
Thanks to the likes of Topjaw et al., the internet has the power to exhibit underrepresented spaces. Commodity fetishism creates indisputable popularity, but virality comes at a cost: misrepresentation, oversimplification, quiet erosion of nuance, and flattening into aesthetic conformity for the feed (which you’ll doomscroll anyway). Dazed’s Panyitoa Soutis explored this in the context of smash burgers, relating the flattening of patties to the flattening of culture, and arguing that the popularity of burger bars is indicative of an increasingly hollow food environment. Small plates culture and conceptual hotspots reflect a broader cultural appetite for that which is novel all whilst being vacant.
Scroll on TikTok long enough (twenty-seven seconds) and you’ll fall into “foodtok”, the internet’s cultural critic. With each saccharine whisper of “Come with me to London’s best…”, an independent restaurant is catapulted into the spotlight. Oftentimes, those adhering to the visual standards of chic European restaurants garner more attention than others, helped by the Westernisation of their environment. Take Donny’s Doners, a playful kebab shop opened by an East London DJ dishing out “all-day kebabs and good times”. The reception has not been entirely positive: Hackney hosts a notable Turkish Cypriot community, and somehow I (like many others) am not seeing a gap in the market. Unless the gap is for the misguided “foodie”, and I reckon that there are even more “good times” to be had at 3am with your local bossman. The same goes for a Manchester burger spot claiming that it’s exploring slider culture from a social and historical food context and Norman’s, which was criticised for appropriating the working-classes. Unbuilding food cultures to join the rat race of the “viral restaurant” can act as a threat to authentic culinary experiences.
For restaurant owners, the questions become pressing: satisfy tastebuds that connect people directly to their roots, or adapt menus for broader appeal? Focus on creating an aesthetically curated online presence, or on authenticity for local diners? Should they embrace tech-led booking systems or leave the door open to OG patrons?
A tension lies between preserving the cultural essence versus marketing it as a consumable product. Familiarity is comforting, but I’m pretty sure Einstein said something about the importance of doing things differently. Maybe the point isn’t purity or perfection, but participation: continuing to cook, eat, reinterpret, and be curious. After all, culture thrives in motion—and the kitchen is a good place to begin.