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[title]Jaeki Cho is just as wonderfully verbose when the cameras are on as when they are off. But when asked why he thinks his content on Righteous Eats and his own channel on TikTok has such a foothold, he had to take a beat. Maybe it was the timing of it all, shining a spotlight on struggling restaurants when they needed it most. Maybe it was his media background that gave his videos a journalistic lens. Or maybe in a sea full of influencers who chase virality, Cho was steadfast in uplifting his community.
“It was very much a food spectacle—viral restaurants, cheese pulls, uni in your pasta, right?” he says of the social media age of that time. “I don't think a lot of foodie Instagrammers were going to Corona Plaza under the Roosevelt train tracks to talk to street vendors.”
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A storyteller at heart, Cho is the face and that voice behind Righteous Eats, a channel dedicated to celebrating and supporting small, often immigrant-owned eateries. Since its start highlighting his local favorites in Queens, Cho and company have visited close to 300 eateries across the boroughs and hosted community events free of charge. His work has been featured in Thrillist and in The New York Times. He just launched his own combo meal at Time Out Market New York and he even sat down with U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to talk about voting over mole tamales. But even though he sports many hats—most of them Kangol—Cho keeps a level head, always ensuring that his content puts community first.
It all started when Cho joined TikTok around the time most of us did—while stuck at home during the pandemic. Tagging his videos #jaekicooks, Cho began documenting his kitchen escapades, from making kimchi jjigae to jumping on the whipped Dalgona coffee trend. While he admits he had no intentions of being a chef, his content found an audience and he gained a cool 300K followers on the platform. But recognizing the dire straits that local restaurants were going through, especially in his orbit of Queens, he figured he could use his tools for good.
“Many restaurants in New York, especially the ones that I frequented as a kid, were impacted in astronomical ways,” he tells us. “I had 300,000 followers on TikTok. I thought, ‘Is there any way that I could encourage people to add foot traffic to these businesses?’”
Cho began interviewing chefs across Queens, singing the praises of sisig and halo halo at Renee's Kitchenette in Woodside to the beauty of jianbing in the AM with Eight Jane Food in Flushing. Soon, more people started to notice, engage, and most importantly, go try it for themselves. In this, his personal passion project became something more.
“At the time, I didn't see a lot of short-form content highlighting restaurants in Queens or ethnic enclaves outside of highly promoted eateries and hubs in Manhattan,” he says. “A lot of communities want to be seen … and there has always been this genuine curiosity of wanting to explore. So having a mascot going in and breaking it down to you, like, ‘Yo, here's three essential dishes that you need to get.’ We're lowering the barrier of entry.”
Alongside co-founder Brian Kim, Righteous Eats officially launched in 2022. Building on its base, the channel’s mission is to celebrate and platform mom-and-pop eateries. A scroll through the feed and you’ll find viral-worthy moments like Cho waxing poetic about oxtail patties at Datz’s Deli and Egyptian pizzas, known as mum feteer, in Astoria (one of his best bites of the year). But more than just food, Cho leans on his journalistic abilities—his background includes documentary filmmaking and writing for Complex and XXL—allowing his subjects' stories to guide the way.
“I don't think [creators] were going to Lot Haven in the Bronx to speak with an undocumented Mexican family that's selling incredible mole,” he says. “I don't think they were trying to have deeper conversations with Ukrainian immigrants in Ridgewood, Queens or Sri Lankan immigrants in Staten Island. Instead of making it about us, we're making it about the people behind the food.”
Lately, the brand has started to pull back on videos, focusing more on intentionality over volume. But in this shift, they’ve been transparent, ready to introduce the next phase for Righteous Eats: to empower restaurants.
“Instead of trying to highlight as many restaurants as possible, how can we take a step back and really think about how we can help these restaurants?” he poses.
This September, the brand hosted its first-ever restaurant seminar. Partnering with Meta Prosper, the free workshop taught restaurateurs how to navigate Instagram, down to what’s Reel worthy versus the grid, and how to leverage social media platforms to tell their own stories. With more events on the horizon, the hope is to fortify local eateries for the long term.
During all of this, Cho is chipping away at his own projects. Under the umbrella of his holding company, Flavor Thing, Cho and his team produced a new series, “Third Cultures,” which explores immigrant communities abroad through the lens of food. But as for Righteous Eats, he envisions more events, a future book deal (manifest it!) and continuing to empower restaurants to tell their own tales.
“We're good at storytelling,” he says of his channel. “But we also don't want [restaurants] to be dependent on us. We want to teach you how to fish, we don't want to keep catching the fish for you.”