My friends and I spend far too much time talking about Albert Cho. We normally do this on a boozy Saturday evening as we scroll through his hugely popular Instagram account, Eat Lit Food, trying to decide whether to spend our measly salaries on doughy noodles or pasta.
Last time we did this, we settled on noodles. Between slurps, we tore into the pettiness of his public tantrum over not receiving free samples of Whittaker’s latest chocolate, all agreeing to unfollow him after dinner. None of us have.
With 75,000 followers, Cho is one of New Zealand’s leading food influencers, but his rise and role within the food scene is unconventional. For starters, he maintains a day job in Auckland marketing agency Mark by South. And his highly opinionated Instagram-caption reviews of the city’s restaurants and eateries are as known for their (often sexually) explicit rambling as they are for dictating what’s hot and what’s not.
In a Zoom interview with the , Cho is right on form. His skin is flawless for the camera, accentuating his sharp jawline – he was, after all, briefly an international model – and he has a couple of things to declare. It is, he says, time for people to stop obsessing over burrata at restaurants..
