Soon, American lovers of food and anything trendy will be able to get Baked Feta Pasta delivered to their doorstep, as long as they live near one of the 300 TikTok restaurants set to open very soon. The video-sharing platform announced their plan for “TikTok Kitchen,” a delivery-only food service, on Friday.
Working out of so-called ghost kitchens (restaurant kitchens not operated by Casper, but invisible in that they either have no connecting dining or takeout venue, or exist in the “borrowed” space of other restaurants, similar to gypsy breweries), the chefs at the TikTok kitchens will be whipping up some of their users’ most viral recipes, made-to-(online) order.
Recipe videos are one of the most popular things users share, with some foods, like pasta chips, dalgona coffee, smash burgers, corn ribs and tortilla folds engaging millions of users, making them quickly spread to other social media platforms as well. Of course, the most famous of all the dishes on the platform’s menu is Baked Feta Pasta, a dish first made popular in Finland by blogger Jenni Häyrinen, consisting of baked feta and cherry tomatoes with chili, stirred up with cooked pasta and basil. It took TikTok by storm, and soon became Google’s most searched dish as well.
@feelgoodfoodie Baked feta pasta with cherry tomatoes!! Recipe on blog • Inspired by @grilledcheesesocial 😘 #tiktokpartner #LearnOnTikTok #fetapasta #recipes
In fact, the trend was so overwhelming that, in February, US supermarket chain officials reported interest in feta cheese as possibly the largest interest increase in a specialty dairy product ever, and the Wall Street Journal reported that sales of the cheese had gone up 45%.
To Greek dairy producers, who may not be as quick to pick up on viral trends online and use them for their advantage as some of their American counterparts, the new TikTok kitchens might prove a second chance at getting their (well-deserved) slice of the profit.
While a lot of the “feta cheese” sold outside of the European Union (where it is a protected designation of origin product) is made in other parts of the world, Baked Feta Pasta did benefit the Greek market in terms of reputation. Many TikTok’ers, and the original creators of the recipe, experienced that Greek feta was the only one that would do, as other variants didn’t have the same flavor or creamy texture. “I only use authentic Greek feta in my baked feta pasta and in my kitchen,” Häyrinen told us. “The feta sold in Finland is imported from Greece. It does make a difference. There is also a similar cheese that is often called ‘salad cheese’ but it’s really not the same at all. It does not melt in the same way and the taste is not really that good. It is a simple recipe, so I would pay attention to the quality of the ingredients.”
While 300 TikTok restaurants are planned across the country for the launch, more than 1000 are expected to open by the end of 2022, TikTok Co-founder Robert Earl told Bloomberg. It remains to be seen whether their pasta will be made with actual Greek feta.
