How Does the Internet’s Most Popular Food Critic Keep Creating Drama?

The restaurant reviewer Keith Lee tastes takeout dishes in his car, and sometimes offends whole cities in the process.

It was a series of questions about tinned fish during a Saturday night dinner service that alerted Amanda Burton, a co-founder of Rooted Rotisserie in Baltimore, that this was an strange order — though she didn’t think it could be life-changing.

Two young men had come into the casual restaurant and asked an unusual number of questions. But their insistence on ordering the warmed tinned fish with a side of bread to go really caught her attention.

“I explained that it’s the kind of thing you want to eat immediately, but they still wanted it to go, so we packed it up,” Ms. Burton said.

Then the Keith Lee effect kicked in.

Mr. Lee, a vastly influential social media food critic, loved Rooted, so the crowds poured in. In a video posted on Aug. 25 to his TikTok account (followed by 16.6 million people), he sat in a Sprinter van parked near the restaurant and reviewed what Ms. Burton recognized as the “odd” to-go order: a half-order of rotisserie chicken, duck confit gumbo, curry wings, an assortment of side dishes and the tinned fish.

“This tastes fantastic,” Mr. Lee said after tasting the roasted chicken brushed with herbs and preserved lemon, giving it a “9.2 out of 10” rating. “This is one of my favorite restaurants I’ve had in a while, and I’m happy we came,” he said as the video cut to him entering the restaurant, where he thanked Ms. Burton and her husband, the chef Joe Burton.