Viral Food Flashback
- Social posts are revisiting global viral hits like Dalgona coffee, cronuts, the TikTok tortilla fold, and the pink sauce craze. (x.com) - One viral thread listed 20 worldwide sensations, while other posts highlight hybrid trends such as croffles and cragels. ( ) - Platforms like Tasty are pushing 22 chain-restaurant copycat recipes that keep these trends circulating online. (x.com)
Food TikTok and X users are turning old internet dishes into a new nostalgia feed, reviving recipes that first exploded between 2013 and 2022. (dominiqueanselny.com, abcnews.com, fda.gov) The best-known examples span a decade of platform-native food: Dominique Ansel’s Cronut launched in New York on May 10, 2013, and TikTok’s tortilla fold took off after a December 29, 2020 post before becoming one of 2021’s defining food hacks. (dominiqueanselny.com, food52.com, abcnews.com) Dalgona coffee surged during the first COVID-19 lockdowns in 2020 after South Korean television and social video pushed the whipped instant-coffee drink worldwide. Pink Sauce followed in summer 2022, when TikTok creator Chef Pii’s bright condiment went viral and then drew Food and Drug Administration scrutiny over labeling and production. (matadornetwork.com, cornercoffeestore.com, fda.gov, wikipedia.org) The replay is happening on platforms built to recycle short-form clips. TikTok still shows about 696,400 posts under #TortillaTrend, and BuzzFeed’s 2018 list of 22 chain-restaurant copycat dishes is still live and circulating alongside newer copycat roundups. (tiktok.com, buzzfeed.com, buzzfeed.com) Hybrid pastries keep resurfacing because they are easy to explain in one phrase and easy to film in one shot. The croffle — a croissant pressed in a waffle iron — spread from South Korea to New York in 2021, while the cragel, a bagel-croissant mashup from Brooklyn’s Bagel Store, started drawing national attention in January 2014. (eater.com, timeout.com, today.com) The older trends also map the evolution of online food culture. Early hits like the Cronut depended on blog posts and long bakery lines, while tortilla wraps, dalgona coffee, and Pink Sauce spread through vertical video, home kitchens, and creator storefronts. (dominiqueansel.com, food52.com, matadornetwork.com, wikipedia.org) Some of the flashbacks carry a cautionary history. Pink Sauce reached store shelves in January 2023 only after a reformulation and a partnership with Dave’s Gourmet, following months of questions about ingredients, shipping, and labels. (wikipedia.org, fda.gov) What is resurfacing now is not one new dish but a catalog of old ones, repackaged as lists, remakes, and copycats. The food changes little; the format keeps changing just enough to make the same recipes go viral again. (buzzfeed.com, copykat.com, tiktok.com)
