Viral food critic Kevin Noparvar can change a restaurant’s fortune – from his car

Kevin Noparvar believes food is "a lot like art," and he emerged as a wildly popular social media influencer by offering his interpretation of various meals. 

Noparvar, who is better known as @how.kev.eats across social media platforms, has piled up over 3.4 million followers on TikTok alone and also has massive followings on Instagram and YouTube. His formula is simple - Noparvar gets takeout from various restaurants, tries it on camera, usually while sitting in his car, and offers his honest opinion about the food.  

"If I can make you see what I see in the restaurant, and that inspires you to go try their food, I have done my job," Noparvar told Fox News Digital. 

"I still kind of just view myself as a guy who's eating food in his car," Noparvar continued. "People are just like a fly on the wall to see how I think about it."

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Kevin Noparvar gets takeout from various restaurants, tries it on camera, usually while sitting in his car, and offers his honest opinion about the food.  

But Noparvar isn’t just a random guy dining alone in his Tesla, and his impassioned reviews can impact restaurants' fortunes by generating millions of social media interactions across multiple platforms. A 2023 video of Noparvar eating Jollibee fried chicken was viewed a staggering 18.4 million times on TikTok, but he said reviews of local establishments are just as likely to go viral as nationwide chains if they land a glowing review on @how.kev.eats social media account. 

Some small businesses have even received such a sudden flood of new in-person customers that they struggle to keep up with the demand after being featured on @how.kev.eats accounts. 

Noparvar is based in Los Angeles and Easy Street Burgers and DTown Pizza are among his favorite local establishments, but he also travels to popular establishments across America to offer his take. 

When Noparvar doesn’t enjoy a meal, he’s willing to "go in" on and harshly scold fast food chains, such as when he called Whataburger "straight-up garbage," but he makes sure to offer constructive criticism that won’t destroy mom-and-pop establishments. 

Noparvar has always been passionate about food and briefly attended culinary school after high school, but quickly decided it was "too intense" and ditched it to study social sciences at University of Southern California. Then he tried his luck as a real estate agent, but he started to feel burned out as his side project of creating content on social media began to take off. 

"I just decided, ‘You know what? I'm going to go full force, and even though I made no money, basically, I went ahead and did it, and it was the best decision I think I had ever made," Noparvar said.

Kevin Noparvar has piled up millions of views with his food reviews. 

Kevin Noparvar’s @how.kev.eats has over 3.4 million followers on TikTok alone.

The 31-year-old Noparvar, who lived with his parents until he was 29, began generating enough income from his content over the past two years to officially declare it his job, even if he had lofty ambitions long before he was able to get his own place.

"I actually always thought this could be a career for me because Food Network's been doing it forever, and I was one of the kids that would be up till two or three in the morning watching food shows instead of watching cartoons or superhero movies or anything like that," he said. 

"I noticed there was a very big shift in the way people consume content. So, I realized my generation, and the generation after me, was starting to consume most of their content on their cell phone," Noparvar continued. "So, I knew there was kind of an opportunity there to be what Food Network was for me." 

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Noparvar said food is "both a necessity and a luxury," which opens a lot of doors for compelling social media content that interests people from all walks of life. He believes his content resonates because people use food for everything from relieving stress and detaching from reality to building muscle and simply refueling. When people have priorities and opinions about the same thing, it often leads to captivating discourse. 

"It's a lot like art," he said. 

"There could be 10 people in a room, and they could all be eating the same dish, and all ten people could be thinking about the dish completely differently. One person could hate it. One person could think it has too much salt. One person could think it's the best dish they've ever eaten in their life. Another person could say it's lacking acid, etc., and they have all these different avenues of where you could take the logic behind the dish," Noparvar added.  "I think it's so fascinating to see how different people interpret the same exact thing, and that's what drives me."

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