TikTok’s Taste Buds are eating the world and conquering the internet, without leaving New York City
By Harmeet Kaur, CNN
(CNN) — Why are TikToks about dining out so boring? Dillon Davis and Nichols Neff were debating the question from their couch in their shared Manhattan apartment late last year, as they watched one video after another of influencers visiting the same handful of upscale restaurants.
Neither one had any experience making social media content. But between the two of them, they had an idea.
“I feel like it’d be cooler to do something more about the hole-in-the-wall restaurants and restaurants that maybe don’t get as much publicity on TikTok,” Neff remembered telling Davis.
Davis, in turn, said he’d been wanting for a while to try food from every country in the world. What if it could be done without leaving New York City?
The duo found a virtual online wheel that could pick a country at random and turned on a camera to record their first spin. It landed on Armenia. A cursory Google Maps search turned up only one Armenian eatery: Little Armenia Cafe in Greenpoint, Brooklyn (in reality, the city has at least one other, called Sevan, in Bayside, Queens).
When Davis and Neff walked in, they told Little Armenia Cafe’s chef and owner Ararat El-Rawi that they wanted the most authentic Armenian experience he could offer them. They recorded themselves working their way through seven dishes including tabbouli salad and spinach pie — and more than that many glasses of Armenian wine — as El-Rawi eventually pulled up a seat to share a bottle.
In the resulting video, the two captured themselves getting emotional about their newfound friend and the mingling of cultures. “This is why we play,” a delightfully inebriated Davis said. “This is why we play,” Neff echoed.
They posted it on November 20, 2025, under the name of the Taste Buds. The combination of the concept, their friendship and their infectious enthusiasm turned out to be immediately irresistible, catapulting them to niche TikTok stardom. The two, both 27, have since moved to separate apartments. But they’ve kept sampling the world’s cuisines and posting a new video each week: mantu at the Afghan restaurant Ariana, tavë kosi at the Albanian restaurant Çka Ka Qëllu, hilib ari at the Somali restaurant Safari, oxtail at the Antiguan restaurant Wadadli.
A community of more than 400,000 viewers has made them appointment viewing on TikTok, awaiting each installment like a new episode of a TV series. “Every Thursday I do a double at my job and when I go on break you guys are always the first video on my feed,” one user commented recently. “Thanks for spending Thursdays with me boys.”
“Everyone quiet my show is on,” wrote another.
‘Who are we to know what an 8/10 Indonesian dish is?’
Taste Buds episodes are unpolished by the standards of food-influencer TikTok, where creators promote gimmicky dishes at impossible-to-book restaurants, often in exchange for free meals or outright payment.
The opening frames always feature Davis and Neff as crudely drawn stick figures like something out of Microsoft Paint. The editing is sometimes choppy, and there are no ring lights in sight. The creators’ names aren’t even specified anywhere on their page — most of their followers know them as Tall Guy and Hat Guy.
“The rough-around-the-edges part about it is what people like a little bit too,” Davis said. “It’s not perfectly put together. It’s not super high production quality. It’s just two friends going to dinner and posting about their experience and talking to people.”
The ribbing and banter between them can make them look like lifelong friends, but Davis and Neff only became pals through a mutual friend when they moved to New York about a year ago.
Davis grew up in a small town in West Texas, dreaming of someday moving to the multicultural metropolis of New York. Neff grew up in Denver — his uncle and his grandfather, a Salvadoran immigrant, were both restaurant owners, instilling in him a special appreciation for the business. Both of them share a desire for new experiences and a willingness to try anything.
The Taste Buds both have day jobs — Davis in consulting, and Neff in tech sales — but they put a lot of time into researching restaurants for the series.
While selecting an Armenian or Bhutanese restaurant proved easy, given the limited options, other cuisines pose more daunting challenges. When their random country generator landed on South Korea, they found hundreds of establishments to choose from, ultimately settling on Ssam Tong BBQ, which opened about 10 years ago in Flushing, Queens. The owner, who did not want to appear on camera, can be heard in the background of the Taste Buds’ video helping them choose what to order and which meats to cook on the grill. Davis and Neff enjoyed so many glasses of soju at the restaurant that they kept the party going at a Korean karaoke bar next door.
Davis and Neff said they pore over Reddit threads and Google Reviews for ideas on what eatery to visit for any given country. “Somewhere that’s very authentic, has a good story to it, and feels like we can go sit down and enjoy the food, but also enjoy the experience in the community and the people as well,” Davis said.
Their wheel hasn’t yet landed on a country without a corresponding New York restaurant, but they’re prepared if and when it does. They get a lot of recommendations from their audience now, and some people have even offered to host them at their homes for a meal. “I think we can get creative and make sure that we do that country right by the experience aspect, even if maybe there’s not a full sit-down restaurant or something,” Davis said.
Crucially, they don’t see themselves as critics. Their goal is simply to spread the word about the city’s breadth of cuisines and introduce people to spots that might not have been on their radar. “Who are we to know what an 8/10 Indonesian dish is?” Davis said. “It’s just fun to try and interesting.”
A few weeks ago, a couple approached the Taste Buds on the subway to announce that, guided by one of their videos, they had spent their Valentine’s Day at The Weekender, the Bhutanese restaurant the friends went to in Woodside, Queens.
“I think the main thing that makes us excited is people are going to the restaurants and trying new things and meeting people,” said Davis.
Restaurants are notorious for yielding slim profit margins, and small businesses in the city are especially struggling. A visit from the Taste Buds can provide a welcome boost.
El-Rawi, the owner of Little Armenia Cafe, said he’s seen business pick up since Davis and Neff came by. One woman hosted her birthday dinner at his restaurant after seeing it on Taste Buds; she’s since been back twice. People’s orders are another hint: “We’re selling more lamb burgers, I’ll tell you that,” he said.
New buds for the Taste Buds
The idea for Taste Buds was partially inspired by a friend who learned how to say “hello” and “thank you” in every language. Davis said this friend would break out the phrases whenever they traveled together or met someone from that country, and he noticed people seemed genuinely touched by the gesture.
“It doesn’t take that much effort,” he said. “It just takes being honest and earnest, asking a few questions and making an effort to connect with someone to make their day better.”
Davis and Neff carry that spirit of curiosity into their conversations with restaurant owners and staff. When they visit an eatery, they typically tell their server that their goal is to learn as much about the country of origin’s food and culture as possible. “So far, everyone’s been super excited about that, just the ability to share their story and their country and where they’re from,” Davis said.
Touria Lamtahaf opened the Moroccan restaurant Dar Lbahja in Astoria, Queens, about a year ago — born and raised in Marrakech, she found that there were few places where she could get proper Moroccan cooking in New York and finally fulfilled her longheld dream of opening up her own place. She runs the restaurant with her sister Meriem Lamtahaf, who is the manager.
The sisters said they weren’t familiar with the Taste Buds when Davis and Neff visited, but they brought out the Moroccan specialties they usually recommend to newcomers: kofta cigars, which are essentially ground beef spring rolls; the chicken bastilla, a savory-sweet pie topped with powdered sugar and cinnamon; and the lamb and prune tagine, a traditional slow-cooked stew. They found Davis and Neff easy to talk to — the pair seemed genuinely interested in their story and made a concerted effort to learn how to say “thank you” and “goodbye” in Moroccan Arabic (shukran and b’slama). “They came in, they enjoyed every bite they had,” Meriem said. “After they left, it felt like they were part of the family, to be honest.”
Meriem invited Davis and Neff back to Dar Lbahja to cheer for Morocco in the African Cup of Nations. Other visits have resulted in similar invitations — recently, they returned to the Antiguan restaurant Wadadli to celebrate the establishment’s four-year anniversary.
In some cases, restaurant visits have turned into genuine friendships. At the Bhutanese restaurant The Weekender, owner Kinley Dorji seemed to take to them immediately. “In my previous life, I must have met you guys,” he said. “Or we must have been a family or brothers.” He taught Davis and Neff to play snooker and invited them to the restaurant’s New Year’s party, where the duo rang in 2026 with his friends and family. Recently, Dorji and the Taste Buds met up again in Brooklyn for a day of basketball, pizza and pool, as captured on a second account called @behindthebuds.
“It’s been pretty amazing, just the friendships we’ve built just off of very simple questions and showing interest,” Neff said.
‘We’re all more similar than we are different’
The Taste Buds are rapidly expanding — T-shirts and hats with their signature stick figure drawings are for sale on their website — and brand deals from big-name sponsors are coming in all the time. Though they aren’t closing the door yet, Davis said they’ve said no to nearly every offer so far: “We’ve tried our best to keep things about the restaurant, about the experience, about people and being authentic to ourselves.”
One exception: An invitation from the Brooklyn Nets to watch a game from a suite at Barclays Center. Davis and Neff agreed, but also extended the invite to all the restaurant owners featured in their series thus far. They also scheduled it for Monday, when they knew many of the restaurants would be closed. The meetup was captured in the Taste Buds’ “Season 1 finale.”
El-Rawi, the Armenian restaurant owner, said the Nets game was his first at Barclays. He was glad, he said, to meet new people who could relate to the challenges he’s navigating as a restaurant owner.
“We got to really discuss the ins and the outs of the business a little bit with each other and people that get it,” he said. “It’s tough in the restaurant business right now.”
Davis and Neff, he added, are “as true as they come off.”
Their followers seem to think so, too. “Boys. I mean this from the bottom of my heart. Thank you,” one user commented on a recent video. “In a world filled with such darkness right now, you two and the friends you’ve made so far on this journey have been an incredibly bright light. Never stop being you.”
As the Taste Buds see it though, what they’re doing isn’t that radical at all: “We’re just breaking barriers,” Davis said. “Talking with people, having a good time, realizing that we’re all more similar than we are different.”
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