Andi Berlin has been working in food media for more than two decades. She was the food critic for the Arizona Daily Star for seven years and is the current restaurant critic at the Arizona Republic in Phoenix. She views food influencers as a trend, rather than a threat to her profession.
"We thought Yelp was going to mess up food criticism, but it didn't," she says. "As a food critic, I do have to respond to what influencers do, and I do emulate that in a way."
Taking a cue from the food influencer videos that play Top 40 songs while the phone camera pans tables full of food, Berlin recently started posting more videos on Instagram to accompany her restaurant reviews. One shows her twirling her chopsticks around various noodle dishes while the song "Kiss Me" by Sixpence None the Richer plays in the background and the words "I'm so into Asian pasta" sit in the left-hand corner of the video.
