Popular social media food influencer Keith Lee has once again sparked intense conversation following a tasting tour of restaurants in a city south of the Mason-Dixon Line.
Like the famous foodie’s viral Atlanta visit last year, Lee’s just-completed trip to Washington, D.C., has resulted in a wide conversation and differences of opinion – not just on his takes relating to the city’s dining scene but his methods of reviewing restaurants.
Dispatches from his social channels show Lee explaining that after recently visiting 12 D.C.-area restaurants, he will not give all of them an on-camera review, essentially saying he intends to keep anonymous food businesses he believes are underperforming.
He conceded to his audience of 16.5 million TikTok followers, in a video posted this week, that he may end up publicly featuring only half of the businesses he visited in the nation’s capital. “A lot of those videos, in my opinion, aren’t constructive at all,” Lee told his audience in a video explaining his reasoning.
In the same post, he included a brief collage of video content alluding to the lackluster experiences of attempting to dine at those same D.C. venues.
In the carefully edited sequence, Lee is seen holding a carryout dish of whiting with sweet potatoes, which he said had a smell that suggested the fish was fried in oil used to cook shellfish, to which he’s allergic.
Lee was also filmed complaining about a mobile kitchen whose staff handled cash without wearing gloves or washing their hands before serving food.
“For privacy of the restaurants we went to, I’m not going to say which restaurant it is,” Lee said to the camera from his normal car-seated position, after the montage of mediocrity ended.
Perhaps predictably, observers figured out the names of restaurants from the video.
Kia Williams, owner of Omari’s Music Bar & Agave Lounge, which Lee said did not have running water, stepped forward to tell her story after her business was identified by D.C. locals. Williams told BET.com a billing error was responsible for the outage and claimed she explained the situation to Lee and showed him a receipt of the payment before he left.
Some also noticed and criticized Lee using photos of at least one D.C. restaurant he would later admit not actually visiting. A photo of wings prepared by Soul Wingz DC, a 24-hour soul food restaurant near Howard University, appeared in the behind-the-scenes montage of unrecommended restaurants.
“For this specific restaurant,” Lee wrote in a social post, “based on the food that we saw I stated I wasn’t the target audience and chose against going to the restaurant meaning I never went even though I was asked to come and give my opinion on their marketing, their food and their customer service.”
In a post of its own, sharing the influencer’s admission, the restaurant said, “We stand by our pictures and products.”
While the “Keith Lee effect” still draws massive attention to food businesses, Lee’s approach and resulting decisions, much like the carryout meals he reviews from the inside of his car, are being increasingly critiqued themselves.
Many praise his ability to positively affect restaurants in need of support, yet others are suggesting his process of selecting and measuring restaurants – particularly because most places he and his family publicly patronize have been Black-owned – are failing to meet what have long been considered standard practices of food criticism.
Chef Bella Jones of Atlanta-based restaurant consultancy 8Eleven Hospitality Group and forthcoming downtown Atlanta restaurant Liz & Leon’s doesn’t consider Lee a food critic, per se.
“Professionally I would define him as a foodie who got lucky,” Jones said. ”I think the secret way he reviews is needed because you get to see the business as they are, and not who they may pretend to be in his presence.”
Credit: Courtesy of 8Eleven Hospitality Group
Credit: Courtesy of 8Eleven Hospitality Group
Jones said she likes what Keith Lee is doing, and appreciates that he brings attention, and money, to hidden gems and struggling businesses.
“It takes a lot of blood, sweat and tears to open a restaurant of any kind, and it’s more tears than anything,” Jones said. “Many small mom-and-pop shops invested everything into their business, and that usually means they have to sacrifice something. That usually ends up being dollars for marketing. So someone like Keith Lee is needed.”
Anela Malik seems unconvinced. A prominent food and travel influencer living in D.C., Malik’s approachable demeanor, and willingness to share discoveries including and beyond food in her content, have helped grow her Instagram audience to 175,000 engaged followers.
“Beyond evaluating these tours through the lens of his work as a food critic, we can look to Keith Lee’s own statements about his desire to make a positive impact and use that as a framework. Are his statements about cities -- home to such diverse communities of people who are so proud of their culinary heritage -- and the backlash they’ve created really the positive impact he’s aiming for?”
Credit: Farrah Skeiky
Credit: Farrah Skeiky
KJ Kearney, a native of Charleston, is a community organizer and a prominent content creator who highlights Black food stories on social media. His Black Food Fridays Instagram account, which won a James Beard Foundation Media Award this year for “excellence in a food-related social media account or platform,” has 181,000 followers.
Like Lee, Kearney shares recommendations and praise for Black-owned restaurants he visits, often mixed with cultural observations, historical facts and free promotion of these businesses. He was nonjudgmental in his assessment of Lee.
“I have seen the criticisms of his recent trip to D.C., and I understand both points of the argument. On one side, people are saying he’s too big and too important to not be better researched and more prepared. If his goal really is to highlight small businesses, there is an understandable line of thought behind that criticism,” Kearney said.
“On the other hand, there are people who believe Keith’s job is whatever he feels like doing. If he wants to solicit spots from his followers — only — then that’s his right.”
Credit: Trenise Elmore of Your World On Film
Credit: Trenise Elmore of Your World On Film
Kearney also sees parallels between the DMV and ATL visits.
“The ATL and DC trips can be considered similar because they all got the same ‘Keith Lee Treatment,’” Kearney said. “He shows up, mines his comments and DMs for suggestions, goes to eat, and leaves a huge tip. And he praises God, too. Can’t forget that part! I think the response to his work is what’s changing.”
Some social media users took the conversation about D.C.’s dining scene as an opportunity to rag on Atlanta by association.
“Keith Lee’s first mistake was going to Atlanta & DC expecting good food, not knowing the chef’s special is hookah,” said X/Twitter user Christina Brown.
Others saw reason to defend the city, seeing similarity in the results of Lee’s reviews on D.C. and Atlanta, and lamenting it as unfair.
“I feel like Atlanta was kinda wronged by Keith Lee, man,” said X user Ryan Morejon, who lives in Miami and works in advertising, explaining that Atlanta restaurants made a different impression on him when he visited.
“I went for a shoot and had incredible food at some incredible spots. It sucks when an influencer picks the wrong spots and taints an entire city’s reputation. I get what he’s trying to do, but now the DMV is witnessing it.”
Other social users claiming familiarity with D.C. restaurants defended the former UFC fighter’s disappointment.
“I love when Keith Lee does his food tour reviews and a city not hittin’, then you got everyone who lives there tryna justify it like ‘Oh he ain’t go to the right place,’” said photographer and author Bria Celest on X.
X user @KevCoke6 weighed in with balance. “Two things can true. Yes, the DC food scene isn’t all that it’s cracked out to be. However, Keith Lee’s palate is a bit limited and how he chooses to eat the food, takeout in the car, makes it challenging to fully experience some restaurants.”
Some are now offering their own critiques of Lee’s culinary criticism.
“I think he’s having a bumpy road so far,” Malik said.
“Using his DC tour as an example, many have pointed to what appears to be his lack of research on a city’s food scene or the foods he’s trying. I personally think that criticism is fair, and his method of accepting suggestions from the masses and then driving around to them has some flaws.”
Lee generally announces his tour stops on social media and invites followers to send recommendations via direct messages for him to consider. In D.C., much like Atlanta, the resulting selections seemed random to many.
“I think the flaws in his method showed up in Atlanta and Oakland as well,” she added.
Credit: Mike Jordan
Credit: Mike Jordan
Jones agreed. “If I had to rate him as a food critic, I would give him a 7.5 and that’s only because he is giving new life to businesses who may be on the verge of closing. But I think he needs to do more research on the cities before he tours them – talk to locals and natives, and not rely so much on the internet to tell him where to go.”
None of this seems to be killing Keith Lee’s buzz, or the continuing sentiment that he has something people simply like. His polite, everyman persona make him a hard person to dislike, even when he visited Atlanta earlier this year after roasting the city in November 2023.
“I ain’t got no point to lie,” Lee said in the recent D.C. explainer video. “We just out here eating food, praying, staying with our families, minding our business.”
Not exactly though, Malik said.
“While many folks might try to say Keith Lee is not a food critic, and that he’s just a man who eats food and wants to help people, I think that’s disingenuous. His platform is a business, it provides income for his family, and he has openly discussed wanting to have a TV show,” she said.
“At this point, no matter how it started, we are watching a food critic with one of the largest platforms in the nation.”
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