A famous TikTok food reviewer has canceled his culinary tasting trip in San Francisco, explaining that he felt unsafe in the massive California city. He explained that unsafe conditions in the city, along with bad-tasting food, caused him to end the trip abruptly, as the views and likes that he would receive from the content were not worth risking his wellbeing.
Lee has over 15 million followers on TikTok, giving him huge reach and influence in the food community and in pop culture in general. When he says that something is bad, people on the internet take notice, and whether they agree with him or not, a conversation is often sparked.
Lee’s trips often come with some charitable giving when he heads to a city, with his first stop in San Fran coming with a $2,500 tip. It was after that encounter in an Oakland restaurant that he decided the trip to the city needed to be cut short. Speaking on his TikTok page, he said, “Unfortunately, the Bay Area stop on the Keith family food tour is officially over, prematurely.”
Interestingly, it didn’t seem that the decision to cut the trip short had anything to do with food. Lee seemed genuinely uneasy about spending time in the deep blue city due to the homeless population that is ever-present and a general lack of hospitality toward tourists and folks from out of town.
He explained, “I truly don’t believe the Bay is truly for tourists right now, and that’s what I was, a tourist. They are just focused on surviving, that business owners, the locals… The amount of tents and living structures and burnt-out cars that we saw people living in was shocking to say the least. Just from the outside looking in, it don’t seem like it was much city interference.”
He continued on, explaining that while he is not a policy expert, it is apparent to him that the city officials must step in and do something before it is too late. He said, “As an outsider, I wish the city would step in. I don’t know if they have. I don’t know if they’ve been trying, but just from an outsider looking in, it don’t look like there was much city interference.”
Lee, who also faced trouble due to his shellfish allergy during the trip, explained that some of the restaurants were so bad that he wouldn’t even post the video. Often, he mentions, he will post a restaurant, whether it was good or bad, offering constructive criticism to the struggling eateries. In the case of some of the restaurants he tried in San Francisco, they were so atrocious that he chose to never post the footage to social media.
In the video, he said, “I want to stress that it is not normal for us to go to restaurants, not like it and not post it. Any other time we ran into this situation, I’ve always had some kind of constructive thing to say. This is just different.”
@keith_lee125 Bay Area taste test 💕 would you try it ? 💕 #foodcritic
"*" indicates required fields