By Marco Shalma

Somewhere between the first “come with me” voiceover and the billionth slow-mo cheese pull, the influencer era collapsed under its own weight. Not with a bang. With a whimper and a tripod blocking the doorway of a restaurant that didn’t need them.

For a few wild years, the food scene handed the keys to people who ate two bites on camera then tossed the rest in the trash. The city followed the algorithm straight off a cliff. We got the same rainbow bagels, the same birria everything, the same molten cookie shots. Virality was the recipe and flavor became collateral damage.

Influencers overstayed their welcome. They turned entire neighborhoods into backdrops. They built hype economies that never trickled down to the owners paying rent. They showed up late, ordered the prettiest dish, and somehow left with the biggest check. That’s talent, sure, but not the kind that keeps a kitchen alive.

But here’s the twist: we’re not mad at creators. We’re mad at the system that rewarded shortcuts over craft. The platforms that boosted dopamine over depth. The brands that chased clout over culture. The followers who fell for it because, well, who hasn’t been fooled by a good close-up?

The reset is already happening. People want real. They want spots where the tables wobble but the food hits. They want cooks who learned from grandmothers, not content coaches. They want recommendations from people who actually finish the plate.

New York is swinging back to flavor over filters. Small businesses are reclaiming their voices. Neighborhoods are shaking off the algorithm dust. And the next wave of food storytelling will look a lot more like journalism and a lot less like a TikTok audition.

Influencers had their run. Cool. Now let’s eat like adults again.

Here are three NYC food spots worth your attention, little to no influencer hype, high integrity, and all playing for keeps.

Puerto Rican vendors, hand-crank shavers, tropical syrups, and block-long lines. Mister Softee tried to steal the crown, but the piragüero kept.… Watch More

Marco Shalma checking in. The city is loud, delusional, and still somehow serving the best food on Earth. Influencers are recycling the same five dishes, corporations are getting fat off small businesses, and neighborhoods are fighting to stay themselves. Here’s your Streetlight—five shots of truth for the week.

I CALL BULLSHIT - Corporations pushing “order local” campaigns while siphoning 20–30 percent off every restaurant they “help.” DoorDash, Grubhub, Uber Eats—these are not partners. They’re landlords with apps. If your favorite spot is hanging on by a thread, these platforms are the scissors.

Taggable: @doordash @ubereats @grubhub

NEW PRODUCT - Burmese Bites Fermented Tea Leaf Dressing. Queens excellence. Zero hype. Zero influencer puppetry. Their laphet thoke is already a city treasure at the Queens Night Market, and now the dressing is bottled and sold directly so they keep the bag. Real flavor. Real family business. No clout-chasing.

Taggable: @burmesebites

CLOSED AND I AM SAD - Hop Shing Bakery, Chinatown. Quietly gone and the city barely blinked. Their egg tarts and baked roast pork buns fed generations before the algorithm was even a thing. This is what NYC keeps losing: humble spots that didn’t know how to “go viral,” they only knew how to cook.t

LIES LIES LIKES - Every “hidden gem” video you saw this week? Same script. Same camera moves. Same paid campaign behind the scenes. They’re not hunting for flavor, they’re hunting for CPM. If the footage looks identical across ten accounts, you’re not watching discovery. You’re watching coordinated advertising dressed as personality.

FUCKOUTHERE - Another “AI-powered food ranking startup” launched claiming it’ll “change how NYC eats.” Buddy, if your product pulls from Yelp, Google, and two Reddit threads, you’re not innovating. You’re regurgitating. Chefs spend years mastering dishes; your app spent six minutes scraping tourist reviews. Take a seat.

That’s your Streetlight. Real talk from someone who eats the food, pays the rent, and actually knows these streets. Support the places that don’t game the system. Celebrate flavor, not followers. There’s more coming next week—bring an appetite and a little courage.

— Marco Shalma

Before delivery apps, before Latin food was a trend, before every block in Queens had a camera crew, a small Colombian family opened a tiny shop on Northern Boulevard. No hype. No PR. Just a fryer, a stack of dough, and a dream to keep the lights on.

People came for the classics first. Beef. Chicken. Cheese. Then they came back for the wild ones. Mac and cheese. Greek. Hawaiian. Thirty flavors on a menu written in marker. Every empanada folded by hand. Every order sent out with the same warmth you get at a relative’s house.

What most customers never knew:

Two decades later, Mama’s Empanadas is still standing.
Still family-run. Still packed. Still feeding a city that grows hungrier by the day.

If you’ve ever grabbed a brown paper bag from that counter,
you’re part of their story.

If you’re a decision maker at your company, you need to be on the bleeding edge of, well, everything. But before you go signing up for seminars, conferences, lunch ‘n learns, and all that jazz, just know there’s a far better (and simpler) way: Subscribing to The Deep View.

This daily newsletter condenses everything you need to know about the latest and greatest AI developments into a 5-minute read. Squeeze it into your morning coffee break and before you know it, you’ll be an expert too.

Subscribe right here. It’s totally free, wildly informative, and trusted by 600,000+ readers at Google, Meta, Microsoft, and beyond.