Keith Lee is sitting in the passenger seat of a car outside Juanderful Tacos in Phoenix. “I’m going to show you everything we got, and we’re going to try it and rate it 1 through 10,” he announces to his 16.1 million TikTok followers, his hands brought together in a steeple. He presents four partly unwrapped tacos for viewers’ consideration: pollo, carne asada, cabeza and a pollo quesataco. He attacks the quesataco first, sprinkling a pinch of chopped onion and cilantro over its innards, topping everything off with salsa verde and a squeeze of lime. He displays the taco’s cross-section for the camera, then carefully introduces one end of the oozing canoe — a mass of meat, cheese and salsa already lugeing toward the limits of its enclosure — into his mouth.
The bite is comprehensive. Every ingredient makes it in. It is also clean: There is no residue left around Lee’s lips. A few seconds of moistly entranced chewing follow before Lee brings his nontaco hand to his mouth and announces — from behind a guard of fingers laced with a single streak of green sauce — “It’s so fresh, crisp, seasoned: 8.7 out of 10. I need about six of these though, I ain’t gonna lie to you. Six or seven.”
He is comfortably one of the cleanest professional eaters at work today.
Lee proceeds to eat the three remaining tacos, pausing only to rave about their quality. But each time he does so, it’s from behind one hand, which is always politely shielding his mouth. He even apologizes for the watery fleck of salsa still trailing across his fingers: “Excuse my hands. I got messy.”
In the comments, Lee’s followers try to prepare Juanderful Tacos for the torrent of business that restaurants face once they’ve received a Keith Lee tick of approval. (“Get ready tomorrow!”) Among the growing ranks of online food influencers — all the professional and semiprofessional eaters jawing straight into the camera on TikTok, YouTube and Instagram — few are bigger or more influential than Lee. He turned to food reviewing as his first career, in mixed martial arts, was coming to an end, and in the short time since, he’s amassed not only millions of followers but also the power to change restaurants’ fortunes and provoke hysterical debate in some of the cities he visits. He’s admired for the attention he pays to small, independent businesses; for his closeness to his family, which accompanies him on cross-country food tours; for his appreciation of good service and generosity with tips.
Yet there’s been little discussion of his uniquely dainty eating style, which is a key element of his aesthetic and a leading source, I believe, of his success.
