Baby Diners

It’s the collective refrain you hear from culinary elitists, top chefs, pundits and naysayers: “Everyone’s a food critic these days!”

Oh, you bet your organic farm they are! Todayʼs food critics are a generation of hyper aware, highly intelligent, and – most importantly – hungry food fetishists disguised as your average earbud-wearing, smartphone-addicted, college-bound (or not) 18-year-old. 

There was a time when only seasoned gourmands were considered worthy food critics. Then camera-toting social media influencers arrived and ended the era of serious food writing as we know it.

Todayʼs food experts may not have spent years dining out at the finest establishments (can they even afford to?) but they know how to navigate the flood of information available to them. Whatʼs more, they search for the obscure and bring these to light, whether itʼs ingredients, hidden outposts, backstreet haunts, or hipster stores catering to every culinary need.

Youngsters who are fattened on a steady diet of food data from birth have an almost encyclopedic (Wikipedic?) knowledge of gastronomy. They are plugged in, charged up and speaking out, at the ready to embrace the unfamiliar, endorse the innovative, and worship the diverse. Call them what you want – amateur historians, mavericks, disruptors – but these 18-year-old critics are here to stay. And no, we canʼt swipe left if we donʼt like what they bring to the table.

This is an excerpt from CatchOn’s fourth Future of Food report, “The Field Guide to Millennial Foodies”. As Asia’s leading food PR agency specializing in brand strategy consulting, often enough we get asked for insights. Being a creative agency in the food scene also means weʼre usually busy spicing up brands, cooking up ideas, stirring up media interest,  making the unsavoury palatable… and always on the hunt for whatʼs next. 

Catherine Feliciano-Chon