Keith Lee on hosting NYC food festival: 'I take it very seriously'

New York Post

13-05-2025

It's a festival worth its salt.
Starring a who's who of culinary icons, Keith Lee's Family Style Food Festival is set to take over Industry City on Saturday, May 17, to assuage even the hangriest New Yawkas.
'I'm more than excited,' Lee, the martial artist-turned-foodfluencer whose 17 million TikTok followers can make or break a restaurant, told The Post.
'It's gonna be amazing, not even just from a food perspective, but from a culture perspective, and from a community perspective.'
Produced in partnership with Complex, the festival is set to bring together the trendiest treats from across the city, all under Lee's trademark umbrella of shining a light on independent businesses.
5 Keith Lee, shown as a South by Southwest influencer panel in March, is 'more than excited' about his foodie gathering this Saturday.
SXSW Conference & Festivals via Getty Images
That includes slices from Brooklyn's celeb favorite Lucali Pizza, sammies courtesy of Lower East Side legend Katz's Delicatessen and the viral Thai eats from Noho's Fish Cheeks, among a buffet of others.
'There's never really a way to include everyone, but we can try,' said Miles Canares, a founder of the festival alongside Ben Shenassafar and Bobby Kim of the Hundreds.
It all began in 2019 with the idea of hosting a family-oriented food bacchanal. Complex acquired the festival last year amid larger plans for a food-focused publication.
5 Keith Lee (left) is joined by rapper Tobe Nwigwe for a food sampling at a 2024 festival in Las Vegas. 'It's gonna be amazing, not even just from a food perspective, but from a culture perspective, and from a community perspective,' he told The Post of his upcoming get-together.
Julian Berman
According to Canares, there's a cutthroat competition for a space at the highly sought-after snack summit.
'Our process of who to include is having a mix of institutions like Russ and Daughters, as well as hot spots,' says Canares. He points to Williamsburg's L'Industrie Pizza with its daily snaking lines, and Calvin Eng's Cantonese-American restaurant Bonnie's as two examples.
Adds Lee, 'I get hundreds of messages a day.'
The festival, which last had a successful stint in Los Angeles in 2024, is also known for limited-time collabs and mountains of merch.
This year, they include a juicy Scallion Pancake Burrito with Char Sui (see: thick slices of Chinese-style pork) cooked up by LES stalwart Nom Wah Tea Parlor in partnership with Forsyth Fire Escape, the likes of which have been creating a buzz online.
The mighty and meaty selections don't end there. Canares is especially salivating over a bountiful bagel sandwich courtesy of Greenberg's, stuffed with eggs, cheese and massive slabs of bacon from Hometown BBQ.
Other noteworthy participants include a veritable UN of eats: Japanese delicacies from Raku and Vietnamese coffee courtesy of La Gaz, are among them. There are even bites from Georgia, the country, that is, in the form of Chelsea's Chama Mama.
The pop-up Schmackwich, known for an ooey-gooey Wagyu chopped cheese, is also a member of the robust roster.
'They don't have a brick and mortar shop, but they have a team that has so much energy behind them,' says Canares.
5 Lee's event is produced in partnership with Complex and will bring together numerous city purveyors.
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Even the sips have major cred, with acclaimed watering hole Double Chicken Please (which was just named one of the 50 Best Bars in the world) also making an appearance.
'The food we feature is really a combination of who we feel like and who can create buzz,' Canares noted. 'There's a lot of restaurants who will have a trick or two up their sleeve.'
When it comes to Lee, he's no stranger to rallying the masses to munch.
The 29-year-old was a successful MMA fighter before becoming a breakout star on TikTok, thus far amassing nearly a billion likes thanks to his nonchalant reviews of tasty mom-and-pop operations nationwide, many of which he films inside the confines of his car.
In the past couple of months alone, Lee's savory search has brought him everywhere from Texas and Chicago to London, where he shot a recent series of reviews. Lee even attended the Grammy Awards in Los Angeles as part of his scrumptious sojourn.
'I take food very seriously,' he says about his review methods, which are more sweet than sour, eschewing the Simon Cowell school of critique.
'I take people's feelings into consideration and I take people's hard work into consideration as well.'
5 Keith Lee says his culinary creation is about bringing 'buzz.'
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5 TikTok creator Lee gets a taste of a British feast for a video.
@keith_lee125/Tiktok
Known to favor smaller operations off the beaten path (earning him the nickname 'The People's Champ'), his first viral hit came as a surprise — even to him.
'The moment I realized this was something bigger than just eating food was when I posted about a pizza shop that was about to close its doors,' Lee recalled. '24 hours later, I went to sleep and my mom woke me up at eight in the morning screaming and yelling and I thought it was an emergency.'
It turns out, his mother saw the fledgling shop on the morning news — with a line out the door, thanks to Lee's video.
But, there's also a flipside.
Last November, eagle-eyed followers spotted something wiggling on sushi he scored from Seattle's FOB Sushi Bar. While Lee couldn't confirm or deny it was a worm, the public reaction was so intense that it led the eatery to temporarily close its doors.
'As long as I stay true to myself, there's no pressure at all because these reviews are exactly who I am in real life,' Lee said of his secret sauce to success.
'When you're not pretending to be something you're not, it's a lot easier to maintain your character than putting on a personality and having to take it off.'
'It's all based on the same thing I pride myself in, which is family,' said Lee, who has two kids with wife Ronni Lee, with a third on the way.
As for his expectations of the festival: 'It's gonna be crazy.'