Written by David Roberts
Reviewed by Lucas Walter
Updated
The top NYC food influencers in 2026 are Rob Martinez, Sam Schnur, Eitan Bernath, Brian Lindo and Mostasting. This list ranks 16 NYC food influencers by median views across their last 30 videos, not by follower count. Each one was found by searching across hundreds of thousands of top performing food posts from New York City.
Examples of what you can ask Klint:
Join 1,000+ marketers who use Klint to find creators in their niche. Start free
All 16, in rank order. Select a row to jump to the write-up.
| Rank | Creator | Followers | Median views | Engagement | Known for |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Rob Martinez @eatingwithrobert | 306K | 493K | 14.3% | Restaurant documentaries |
| 2 | Sam Schnur @thenaughtyfork | 2.4M | 299K | 3.8% | Comfort-food recipes |
| 3 | Eitan Bernath @eitan | 812K | 173K | 1.9% | Big-idea recipe videos |
| 4 | Brian Lindo @briancantstopeating | 575K | 127K | 3.8% | Restaurant and sandwich reviews |
| 5 | Mostasting @mostasting | 1M | 115K | 8.4% | “Supposedly the best” reviews |
| 6 | Jon Barr @herebebarr | 125K | 111K | 6.1% | Address-first food guides |
| 7 | Julian Mu @itsjulianmu | 252K | 105K | 9.8% | Sandwiches and favorite spots |
| 8 | Jake Cohen @jakecohen | 1.1M | 97.1K | 3.1% | Jewish holiday recipes |
| 9 | Greg & Rebecca @devourpower | 4.5M | 97.1K | 8% | Over-the-top dishes |
| 10 | Eats By NYC @eatsbynyc | 479K | 96.6K | 2.4% | New openings and lists |
| 11 | Sophia Minucci @sophiasnacksnyc | 98.2K | 90.5K | 13% | Love letters to NYC spots |
| 12 | Marco Lombardi @marcosworldnyc | 272K | 68.2K | 7.3% | Cheap eats with prices |
| 13 | Jeremy Jacobowitz @jeremyjacobowitz | 604K | 60.4K | – | Bagel orders and interviews |
| 14 | Alexa Matthews @eatingnyc | 334K | 53.2K | 1.9% | Date nights and desserts |
| 15 | Food Baby @foodbabyny | 311K | 37.2K | 2.4% | Desserts, pizza, bakeries |
| 16 | Ali Chilton @nycfoodfaves | 176K | 33.8K | 1.9% | New openings in Manhattan |
The best food influencers in NYC aren’t simply the accounts with the most followers. Instagram and TikTok both show videos to people based on how the video performs individually, not just based on who follows the creator. As a result, a small or mid-sized account can reach more people than one several times its size.
That’s why we rank NYC food influencers by median views of their videos (average number of people a typical video reaches). As of October 2026, the five most-watched are Rob Martinez, Sam Schnur, Eitan Bernath, Brian Lindo and Mostasting.
Grouped by what each creator could do for a restaurant: send people to it, travel out to it, tell its story, or cook at home instead. The number beside each name is the creator’s overall rank.
Guides that name the place, the street, and what just opened. Most of their posts are set in Manhattan.
A no-nonsense guide to New York food: list videos about the longest lines or hidden finds, each with the exact street address. Most are filmed in Manhattan.
2 sponsored posts in the last 90 days, in finance software and healthcare.
New openings and best-of lists, each naming the restaurant and the neighborhood. Most are set in Manhattan, from the East Village to SoHo.
No sponsored posts found in the last 90 days.
Restaurant and guide videos with a soft spot for date-night dinners and desserts, mostly in Manhattan. A separate series covers better-for-you grocery finds.
No sponsored posts found in the last 90 days.
First-person guides to New York restaurants and cafés, led by what has just opened. Most are set in Manhattan, from SoHo to the Upper East Side.
1 sponsored post in the last 90 days, in cheese.
Reviewers who travel across the boroughs and beyond for a dish. A good fit for a restaurant outside Manhattan.
Restaurant and sandwich reviews across New York, alongside That One Dish, a series that visits mom-and-pop places around the country. About half of recent videos are filmed outside the city.
5 sponsored posts in the last 90 days, in packaged snacks, drinks, a food festival, rail travel and credit cards.
Restaurant reviews that open on a claim like “supposedly the best” and list the full order in the caption. About half the videos are from New York and half from New Jersey.
No sponsored posts found in the last 90 days.
High-energy videos of over-the-top dishes, posted almost every day under a “going all out” banner. New York is a large share, with the rest across the tri-state area and New England.
No sponsored posts found in the last 90 days.
Cheap eats and street food with the price in the first line, from Chinatown dumplings to finds in the Bronx, Queens, and Brooklyn. Most captions give the total spent.
4 sponsored posts in the last 90 days, in sports nutrition, fast food and drinks.
Desserts, pizza, and bakery finds, often filmed with the family. Queens neighborhoods such as Forest Hills and Sunnyside come up often, alongside spots across the city.
No sponsored posts found in the last 90 days.
Creators who film the people behind a place, or their own attachment to it, as much as the food.
Short documentary films about New York food institutions, usually with the owner talking on camera. Most are set in Manhattan’s Chinatown and the city’s older restaurants.
No sponsored posts found in the last 90 days.
Sandwiches, friends, and places that “feel like home,” mostly in Manhattan and Brooklyn. Travel videos, such as a taco crawl in Mexico City, appear between the New York ones.
1 sponsored post in the last 90 days, in air travel.
Upbeat restaurant reviews and “love letters” to favorite New York spots. Food is nearly the whole account, with some travel in between.
7 sponsored posts in the last 90 days, in travel and tourism, pasta sauce and restaurants.
Food interviews, including a series that asks guests for their bagel order, plus restaurant visits and longer vlogs. A good share of recent posts are personal rather than about food.
No sponsored posts found in the last 90 days.
Recipe creators who cook at home rather than eat out. A fit for a food product, not a dining room.
Comfort-food recipes filmed at home, from croissant smash burgers to focaccia and fried-chicken sandwiches. Captions invite viewers to comment for the recipe, and New York restaurant visits are mixed in.
2 sponsored posts in the last 90 days, in condiments and sauces.
Polished recipe videos built around one ingredient or one big idea, such as a thousand cloves of garlic. Filmed in a home kitchen, with cookware and brand collaborations along the way.
2 sponsored posts in the last 90 days, in condiments and pet food.
Home cooking and Jewish holiday recipes, from challah to babka tiramisu. Recent videos also follow events at Nosh Sense, a new space in Brooklyn.
No sponsored posts found in the last 90 days.
We analyzed the 230 posts these 16 creators published on Instagram and TikTok in the last 30 days. Of those, 28 beat their creator’s usual views by 3× or more.
Here are the hooks that are working, read from each post’s caption, title, or on-screen text.
“STUFFED RICOTTA PIZZA from Mimmo’s Pizza Shoppe on Staten Island NYC!”
The video opens on the name of the dish, often in capitals, and then says where it comes from. Half of these breakouts came from one account, @devourpower, and the rest from the home cooks on the list.
Greg & Rebecca 1.5M views · 15.2× their usualFor a restaurant, this is the easiest opening to set up: a dish with a name worth saying out loud. Naming the restaurant and the neighborhood in the same first line tells a viewer exactly where to go.
“Another love letter to 📍Murray’s Cheese but you guys Tuna Melt 22 actually shocked me”
These open on how the creator feels about a place before saying what is on the plate: a favorite they keep going back to, a date that went well, a sandwich that surprised them.
Sophia Minucci 287K views · 3.2× their usualA creator can only make this video about somewhere they already love. The creators who eat with you without being asked are the ones to talk to first.
“NYC’s Longest Food Lines! Wah Fung No.1”
The best barbecue in New York, the longest line in Chinatown, the best steakhouse in New Jersey: a claim big enough that viewers stay to see whether it holds up. Each of these breakouts came from a different reviewer.
Jon Barr 863K views · 7.8× their usualA restaurant can’t hand a creator this line. A dish with a real queue or a real reputation gives them one.
Ali Chilton: “Would you pay $60 for a loaf of bread?” reached 2M views, 59.5× their usual.
Eitan Bernath: “If you make this with 999 cloves of garlic, it won’t come out correctly!” reached 2.8M views, 16× their usual.
Alexa Matthews: “Romance is alive and well and apparently it comes with tableside chocolate mousse.” reached 553K views, 10.4× their usual.
What the NYC food accounts on this list do at each size on Instagram and TikTok. Use it to judge whether a creator’s numbers are strong for their tier.
| Tier | Followers | Median views | Engagement | Posts a week | Sponsored posts |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mid | Under 500K | 90.5K | 6.1% | 2.3 | 7% |
| Macro | 500K to 2M | 115K | 3.5% | 3.7 | 5% |
| Mega | Over 2M | 198K | 5.9% | 5 | 4% |
Medians across these 16 accounts, from each account’s last 30 videos. “Sponsored posts” is the share of posts in the 90 days to Oct 12, 2026 that carry a paid-partnership label or a stated sponsor.
If you run a restaurant, bakery, or café in New York and want a creator to come in, check these things before you send the invitation.
Scroll back through a creator’s last month and note the neighborhoods. Many New York food creators post mostly from Manhattan, and some split their time with New Jersey, Connecticut, or other cities, so a share of their followers may not live anywhere near you.
If you are in Bay Ridge or Astoria, start with the creators who already post from the outer boroughs.
A restaurant visit, a recipe, and a story about an owner do different jobs. A reviewer sends people to a table. A home cook shows people what to make with an ingredient. A documentary-style creator makes people care about a place before they ever go.
If you sell a sauce, a bread, or a cheese as well as meals, a home cook can build a recipe around it. A reviewer can’t.
Some creators post a few times a month and give each video to one place and the people who run it. Others post almost every day and give each place a minute.
The first suits a restaurant with a story to tell. The second suits a dish that explains itself in one shot.
A free meal is a perk, and perks count. The FTC says a creator who receives free or discounted products or other perks and then mentions the business should disclose it. In a video, the disclosure belongs in the video itself, not only in the caption.
Settle this before the visit, not after the post goes up: whether the meal is hosted or paid, what you expect in return, and how the post will say so.
We identified and ranked these creators by searching hundreds of thousands of top performing food posts on Instagram and TikTok from New York City with Klint.
We rank by median views across each creator’s last 30 videos, so one viral video can’t lift an account up the list.
To get this list or a similar one for yourself, describe the creators you’re looking for in the Klint web app, or paste this prompt into any AI agent connected to Klint:
Find the top 16 food influencers based in New York City on Instagram and TikTok, ranked by median views across their last 30 videos. For each, give followers, median views, engagement, posts a week, sponsored posts, and their best post this month.
Klint is trusted by 1,000+ marketers for AI-native influencer marketing.
As of October 2026 the top five NYC food influencers by median views are Rob Martinez, Sam Schnur, Eitan Bernath, Brian Lindo and Mostasting.
Counted by followers, the three biggest New York food names on Instagram here all cook at home: Sam Schnur (@thenaughtyfork, 2.4M), Jake Cohen (@jakecohen, 1.1M) and Eitan Bernath (@eitan, 812K). Among the restaurant reviewers, Jeremy Jacobowitz (@jeremyjacobowitz) leads on Instagram with 604K followers.
@devourpower has the most followers on this list: 4.5M on TikTok. By median views the account ranks 9th. The most-watched creator, Rob Martinez, has 306K followers and a median of 493K views.
Both. Each creator on this list appears once, on the platform where their videos get the most views: 9 on Instagram and 7 on TikTok. 14 of the 16 also have an account on the other platform.
Start with the people already posting from your block: search the restaurants around you on Instagram and TikTok and note which creators keep turning up. With Klint you can ask for them in plain words instead, for example “food creators who post from Astoria and get more than 20K views a video”.
It depends on the size of the account, how many posts you want, and whether you also want to use the video in your own ads. For a restaurant, many collaborations start as a hosted meal, with a fee on top for a guaranteed post or for a larger account. Agree in writing what the meal or the fee buys and how the post will be labeled.
Yes. Any creator can ask to be taken off Klint’s lists, and the request applies to every page they would otherwise appear on.
On this list and would rather not be? Write to privacy@tryklint.ai and Klint will take you off.
