Social media star shines spotlight on Fairfax restaurant dubbed ‘the Asian Chipotle’
MMA fighter turned TikTok star Keith Lee has brought his food review tour to the D.C. area and is already showing how much of an impact his “effect” has on local restaurants.
On Tuesday, Lee, who has over 16 million followers on the app, visited Okonomi Asian Grill in Fairfax, Virginia.
In a post, Lee said a member of the community reached out to him suggesting he visit the restaurant as the first stop of his long-awaited food tour. The writer said Okonomi’s owner, Alex Kang, “worked practically alone for the majority of the time” when the restaurant was in its first year, but has grown to be a fan favorite in the Fairfax area.
The writer added that the restaurant “has been hit with hard times,” after they’ve seen an increase in DoorDash thefts and scams, leaving Kang and his crew “short hundreds of dollars.”
@keith_lee125 Okonomi Asian Grill taste test would you try it ? #foodcritic @Okonomi ♬ original sound – Keith Lee
Lee ordered a meal and tasted the food in a video that quickly racked up more than one million views in just a day.
“I don’t know what to say to that!” Kang told WTOP. “That’s wild.”
The review Lee gave was a good one, and Kang said he’s seen a definite increase in business with the extra publicity, doing about double the business he normally does.
“I went to bed before he posted it,” said Kang. “I had like 100 notifications when I woke up, and I was like ‘I don’t know what this is.'”
Kang said the whole thing came as a surprise to him, especially when Lee came back and donated $2,000.
“There was a guy and a girl that came in,” explained Kang. “They came back in later with a huge group, and, yeah, it was Keith Lee.”
The style of his food is based off Japanese rice bowls or Vietnamese vermicelli bowls, according to Kang.
“Basically everything is made fresh,” he said. “The chicken and all the meats are marinated the night before.”
In his video, Lee said some people have described the restaurant as being like an “Asian Chipotle.”
WTOP has reached out to Lee for comment.
WTOP’s Ciara Wells contributed to this report.