The Algorithm Behind Restaurant Hype: Who Actually Controls Food Trends?

Strawberries wrapped in chocolate are sold at a stand at London’s Borough Market. That’s nothing out of the ordinary milk chocolate, good fruit, a wooden spork, and a transparent plastic cup. On any other Saturday morning, you wouldn’t give it any thought. However, hundreds of people don’t pass by. They form a lineup that twists and clusters like living things, sometimes lasting forty minutes.

Not because they were instructed to by a newspaper reviewer. Not because it was recommended by a famous chef. Because these strawberries were deemed worthy of 150 million views by TikTok’s recommendation algorithm, a system that no one in that queue completely comprehends. Most people say the strawberries are good. All right. And it may be just the goal.

The way culinary trends develop has changed, and it happened so slowly that most of us hardly noticed. Ten years ago, a restaurant could establish its reputation through patient word of mouth, a positive broadsheet review, or even a mention on a culinary show. Critics and editors, who had spent years cultivating their tastes and opinions, gatekept the slow process. These days, a dining room can be filled for months with a single thirty second movie that was shot on a phone, narrated by an unknown person, and illuminated by a blazing LED ring light at a corner table. The gatekeepers are now in the same line as everyone else, although they haven’t completely vanished.

It’s probable that an algorithm, rather than a human, is the most influential food critic in use today. Michelin stars and culinary training are unimportant to TikTok‘s For You page, which makes up more than 90% of what users see on the app. Watch time, completion rates, shares, and saves are all important to it. The duration of your thumb’s hesitation over a video of cheese stretching between two sides of a meatball sub is measured.

The new currency of restaurant success is that hesitation, a split second of raw, ravenous attention. Chefs are aware of this. It’s very evident when you look at a menu and someone in the kitchen has said, ‘Yo, what’s our viral dish?’ said Alex Delany, a former editor of Bon Appetit who is now a culinary consultant. French fries drenched in uni cream, pasta balloons bursting over filet mignon, and tableside Caesar salads are all examples of inventiveness. These are carefully crafted moments that are intended to appear on a screen before they appear on a palate.

There’s a persistent tension here. Contrary to expectations, items that Google’s Vision AI more readily identified as actual food that is, regular, normal looking dishes received noticeably more social media interaction, according to research from Toronto Metropolitan University’s Ted Rogers School of Management. Presentations that were elaborate and visually appealing actually performed poorly. People who browse quickly are drawn to content that their brains can comprehend quickly.

Thus, eateries are faced with an odd paradox. While the influencer economy encourages spectacle, the algorithm favors recognizability. Chefs must choose between producing cuisine that looks comfortingly familiar and food that produces the kind of dramatic, cheese pulling, gold flake dusted content that influencer accounts are drawn to. Which instinct will prevail is still up in the air.

Influencer marketing has developed into a remarkably structured industry. Restaurants and content artists are now connected by agencies such as Mustard through tiered packages $300 for their Fomo Promo, $1,000 for a Champagne Campaign that promises six figure reach. Every day, creators offering collabs, a term that has become a sort of calling card, send direct messages to restaurants. Some proprietors, such as Patricia Howard of the well known London locations Dame and Lord’s, flatly reject these proposals.

Some have fully embraced the system, such as Joe Isidori of Manhattan’s Arthur & Sons. Isidori, the creator of the candy filled milkshakes that typified Instagram in the middle of the 2010s, had an influencer party where dozens of TikTokers enjoyed free food while the cameras were rolling. One of the resulting videos had 1.5 million views. Reservations increased dramatically. If you want to look at it that way, the math makes sense.

However, as this is happening, it seems like something significant is being lost. Chef Maycoll Calderón of Cuna at The Standard East Village is tired of overly engineered food and drinks dishes that rely on gimmicks, extreme presentations, or excessive garnishes instead of flavor. At Momofuku Noodle Bar, Pablo Vidal Saioro talks about a culture of performative consumption, where people spent 2025 documenting their meals instead of experiencing them and chasing Chipotle tricks instead of preparing real cuisine. The chef and proprietor of HAGS, Telly Justice, puts it more bluntly amazing local establishments quietly close around the corner, while long queues grow outside algorithmically favored restaurants. That segment is never filmed.

Naturally, the core of all of this is Gen Z. It’s difficult to dispute the statistics 84% of them actively follow food trends on social media, 70% cite TikTok as their main source for restaurant recommendations, and within the next few years, they’re expected to account for 40% of all consumers worldwide. This generation starts their dining experience in the feed rather than at the host stand. They browse internet menus, watch TikTok reviews, and check Instagram. The social media presence of a restaurant is no longer marketing. It’s the entrance door. Additionally, they continue to move digitally if the door doesn’t appear intriguing during the first three seconds of a scroll.

The way that this has virtually eliminated a trend’s lifespan is both fascinating and a bit scary. On Tuesday, a flavor profile becomes popular, shows up on restaurant menus the next week, and wears out in a month. The mania for swicy gave way to swalty. When Birria ramen arrived, it vanished. Mash up delicacies like crookies, brookies, and cruffins exist mainly because the portmanteau sounds good in a caption. For individuals who enjoy novelty, the speed is thrilling, but for chefs attempting to create something long lasting, it is punishing. A tasting menu should be a stage for personality, as Rob Rubba of Oyster Oyster stated quietly in frustration, rather than another formulaic approach aiming for the same repeated virality.

The queue itself contains a dilemma. More people want to join as it goes on. In her book about contemporary food culture, Ruby Tandoh eloquently explains this phenomenon the line becomes its own advertisement, critic, and defense. You assess the number of people in line, calculate the wait time, and conduct a silent cost benefit analysis before joining because, if everyone else believes that standing here is worth while, then perhaps it is. In 2006, Shake Shack discovered this. Twenty years later, the strawberry vendor at Borough Market worked it out. The mechanics are still the same. It has been amplified. It simply takes a phone and a few moments of someone’s preoccupied attention to do what used to require a newspaper column.

Chefs and food experts are quietly rebelling as 2026 approaches because they want food to taste good before it looks beautiful. It’s more anti emptiness than anti trend. the preference for content above show. No one, not even the chefs, influencers, or diners waiting in line with their phones raised, can say with certainty whether the algorithm will reward that change.

i) https://www.linkedin.com/posts/rishabhsawansukha_when-ai-became-the-new-instant-noodles-activity-7395229211415871488-zbPm
ii) https://www.torontomu.ca/tedrogersschool/news-events/2022/06/think-your-food-looks-basic-algorithm-might-prefer-that/
iii) https://www.aol.com/articles/asked-experts-food-trends-end-214500771.html
iv) https://www.grubstreet.com/article/tiktok-took-over-the-menu.html