Power Ranking TikTok’s Food Trends of 2023
Words: Shamim de Brún
Images: Unsplash and Google Images
Words: Shamim de Brún
Images: Unsplash and Google Images
How do you do, fellow youths? It is me, a cool and relevant elder millennial who knows many things about trends and slang and such. So I got to thinking about Char’s year-end roundup of TikTok food trends, seeing as how I have my “finger” on the “pulse” of this cultural moment.
TikTok videos have a propensity to “go IRL” at lightning speed. These FoodTok vids run the gamut from silly to divisively problematic, covering all the tasty goodness in between.
There’s also a profoundly human reason why these videos have such indelible appeal for people: We’re all messy bitches who love the tea. And plenty of us love nothing more than the feeling of superiority that comes with eating a good food trend, especially if it means racking up a bunch of likes.
So, to stir the proverbial pot, we have the power to rank the TikTok food trends of the year.
Parmesan Espresso Martini
Building off the enduring popularity of adult Red Bull and vodka, also known as the Espresso Martini, this cheesy version arrived with a boom boom pow. Cheese and coffee as a traditional pairing are spread everywhere, from Latin America to Scandinavia. From March to about June, this trend slowly grew to become a bit of a moment with every drinks influencer worth their rind trying it out. It managed to hit 318K views in no time. While I couldn’t find a Dublin-based bar trying it, there were many gimmick and trend-focused bars in the states, giving it a good whack.
Food Girl Aesthetics
The “[insert descriptor]–girl” framework cemented itself as a genre in 2019 thanks to the song-cum-meme “Hot Girl Summer.” But then, all of a sudden, they were all food girls? These days, creator after creator churns out video after video of what makes a person a tomato girl, strawberry girl, baked beans girl, hard-boiled egg girl, mango girl, vanilla girl, coconut girl, olive girl, potato girl, etc. The list goes on. The search “food-inspired” on TikTok has 666 million views and counting. In the marshes of TikTok, every food-girl variation hashtag garners views. Millions and millions of views. Lemon Girl is sitting pretty at 11.5 million. Strawberry Girl hits hard at 63.9 views, and Cherry Girl rests on 36.5 million. While this trend is a little less about food and more about aesthetics, we claim it as a food trend here because where would these girls be if it weren’t for the humble tomato’s glorious Italian heritage?
Smash Burger Tacos
Smash burger tacos, which, I can confirm, taste exactly like they sound, had a holdover on TikTok this year with businesses on the Smash Burg train hopping on board lickety-split. Smash burger tacos are essentially a Big Mac in the form of a taco, and users love them because they’re so easy to make. Easy-to-make recipes mean easy-to-make replication videos, so the content farm keeps producing hit after hit. These bad boys garnered over 150 million views this year before kinda flat-lining in September.
Pistachio Everything
Pistachios have always been popular among flavour-focused nutters. But in January, the Californian green nut butter earned a ton of buzz. It replaced peanut butter, topping acai bowels in Urbanity and almond filling in East Road cafe croissants. Everyone was licking on nothing but pistachio ice cream last summer. Ciao Cannoli‘s biggest seller is the pistachio flavour.
Further, it was stirred into cocktails, scented candles, and frozen into Disney’s Dole Whips. It’s been worming its way into the hearts of people who love inviting, indulgent nuttiness. It’s thrilling to see where our gal will pop up next. The word ‘pistachio’ has 899.5M views on TikTok; for context, the phrase peanut only has nearly 90 million.
Little Treat Girlies
If you were on the internet, in any form, since the Cost of Living Crisis (COLC) began, you undoubtedly saw the “little treat girlie” (LTG) emerge fully formed from the head of TikTok. Like Athena before her, the Little Treat Girlie is of her time: buttery croissant in one hand, a smartphone uploading an endearingly authentic TikTok in the other. These creators repeatedly made videos about being little treat girlies and holding different snacks. This evolved, leading us to the Little Treat ensemble videos we live through. Overall, this year, the phrase Little Treat has garnered 100 million views and climbing. This is one trend I think we will continue to see grow and evolve as the incipient recession looms.
Cottage Cheese in Everything
If 2023 saw the redemption of one food cursed by 80s diets, it was cottage cheese. This year, it went from zero to hero of TikTok’s healthy snack community. Its comeback is because of the fitness bros and wellness brigade. They have been using it to make everything from ice cream to pancakes and even lasagna! In fact, #cottagecheese has more than 223M views on TikTok! Cottage Cheese Ice Cream: 44.2M views. Is it as smooth and indulgent as Häagen-Dazs? Admittedly not, but it’s still pretty tasty and an example of leveraging the nutritional punch of cottage cheese without giving people nightmares about drowning in it.
Americans Discovering Irish Chinese
In early 2023, the Yanks showed their cards, and there wasn’t a spice bag among them. If you were on the scroll recently in March, you undoubtedly saw the glut of excessive overreactions to Irish people plating their takeaways. Some bewildered Yanks took it upon themselves to make multiple videos about the phrase getting “a Chinese”. It was genuinely bonkers. Irish creators such as LordKeely, GERRY CHERRY 🍒 and C H L O E gained tonnes of views for videos that ran through their Chinese food orders around this time. This year alone, the hashtag “Chinese takeaway” on TikTok accrued 278.5 million views and counting.
Rotisserie Chicken With Bare Hands
Somewhere in the medley of the summer, everyone started to confess that they ate entire rotisserie chickens with their bare hands. Typically over the sink. This dovetailed with the rat girl trend, which was basically a rejection of everything ‘That Girl’ or ‘Clean Girl’. Women were embracing their inner fertility and tearing hunks of chicken off the bone like the savages we are never permitted to be in public. It went viral in a more minor way than Girl Dinner, but it was just as culturally relevant, with 55 number of videos ranking up 268 million views this year alone.
Girl Dinner
Girl Dinner was the most significant food trend of the year. It refused to be defined. Op-ed after thinkpiece were written about the trend that became a meme trying to communicate to the traditional media dinosaurs what exactly the ephemeral Girl Dinner was. Originator Olivia Maher intended it to be a no-fuss, self-indulgent compilation of little bites of happiness like fresh fruit, a whole jar of olives, and maybe fancy cheese. It was basically snack plates for the Zoomer generation, but some copycats were pretty light on the fun — and nutrition. Despite the controversy, or maybe because of it, this hashtag topped the charts with 2.8B views more than twice as many as our next reviewed fad.
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