Mimi, the content creator behind the food account @FeedMi, believes there’s a gap in the food content industry. Recipe videos for easy Asian food, specifically Vietnamese food, are not in abundance.
So, Mimi’s trying to fill that gap.
“I think there’s a need for those kinds of videos,” she says in an exclusive interview with Spoon University. “I think those are really good for fellow Vietnamese kids that want to learn how to make the Vietnamese food that their parents never taught them, or they just never had the opportunity to learn.”
Growing up in a Vietnamese family surrounded by delicious traditional dishes, Mimi was interested in food at a young age. She was born in Vietnam’s Ho Chi Minh City and immigrated to Texas when she was four years old, always located in a place with a rich food culture.
The foods she makes content about now often revolves around her heritage and her current home of Austin, Texas — whether it be Vietnamese food with an American twist, or vice versa.
“All of the stuff I like to cook is either Asian recipes or stuff that is inspired by it, with the primary focus on Vietnamese food, just because it’s my comfort food. I learned a lot of those recipes from my parents, my mom and dad,” Mimi says. “But since I’m also an Asian American, it ends up being a fusion.”
Mimi began creating content on Instagram in 2018. Prior to that, she had built up a collection of food photos as sort of a food diary.
“Pretty much since the iPhone was invented, I’ve always taken photos of my meals. I think food is connected to memories a lot,” she says. “I think it’s just a fun little keepsake.”
When she graduated from her master’s program, she started to post her old photos along with a short review or recommendation in the caption. From there, things began to take off.
While her Instagram page gained a bit of traction, Mimi’s content creation really became popular once she joined TikTok in 2020. As she had more free time during the pandemic, Mimi started filming herself making recipes at home and trying restaurants around the Austin area. She also began her own website with a host of recipe archives.
With regards to creating both food and content, Mimi likes to keep things simple. She prefers to film using her iPhone and uses Apple’s preloaded iMovie app as her editing software.
“I’m kind of a lazy cook. So usually, I get inspired by shortcuts,” Mimi adds. “Any shortcut I can find, I usually kind of adapt it to my recipe, or add a little Vietnamese twist on it.”
Thankfully, these shortcuts have taken Mimi far. Her Instagram now has almost 250K followers and her TikTok has over 350K followers. She now posts every few days, creating videos on a wide variety of topics — from her trademark Vietnamese recipes, to reviews of new Costco products, to trying viral dishes.
Despite her success, Mimi said there is no set formula to her content.
“It started out as a hobby, and even though it’s my main job now, I don’t want it to feel like a job,” she says. “I don’t really like to have a content calendar where I organize, like, this day I’m posting about restaurants and this day I’m doing recipes. I kind of just do whatever feels natural to me.”
Mimi’s talents extend past cooking and social media, though. She attended University of Texas, Austin for a Bachelor’s in Biology and Master’s of Health in Epidemiology. Prior to content creation, she worked as an epidemiologist in birth defect research.
On top of that, she recently gave birth to two twin girls in November. Mimi is currently on a maternity hiatus from @FeedMi, posting now about once a month.
From learning her parents’ recipes to sharing these recipes with people on the internet — and eventually her daughters — it seems that things have come full circle for Mimi.