In 2020, Fallah Heard was stuck in the house with the rest of the world, waiting out the pandemic in her Byram, Mississippi, apartment. With no job, she began making dishes and posting them on her social-media channels. She’d always wanted to be a chef, but things changed once she did some research on culinary school.
She recognized that the pressures of working in a kitchen didn’t suit her, but it didn’t diminish her love for food. One of her signature dishes is ribeye steak sandwiches, which she pairs with her own garlic mayo on buttery bread. Cooking for her is like art, she compared.
“When I’m in the kitchen, it feels like peace. I have my music playing. I can cook what I want. Sometimes, you don’t even know what you’re going for, but it comes out to be something different,” Heard explained to the Mississippi Free Press.
Fallah began selling plates of food for a while, but inflation caused her to pull back from the side gig. Her followers, however, were still eager to hear her thoughts on all things food, so they began recommending restaurants in the Jackson metro area for her to sample. It was her review of Valley’s Street Fish House that first landed Heard a ton of online engagement.
“It’s a staple. Everybody and they mama and grandma have been to Valley’s before. It was a lot of people from Chicago and around the United States that went to Jackson State in the ’90s, and they had it back then,” she said. “Everybody was talking about how they remember it and how they wanna get back to it.”
Since then, Fallah has been reviewing restaurants in Jackson and surrounding cities, becoming a food influencer known as Fallah the Foodie on social-media platforms. She has amassed around 136,000 followers on TikTok and more than 8,000 followers on Instagram.
“I love food reviewing. I’m trying to be kinda like the next Gordon Ramsey. Like, go in, change a restaurant, run their social media for them. I wanna really turn restaurants up on another level,” the food influencer said.
“Sometimes one good review would change how much a business is making, and they can put that into themselves, and they can change their whole business and start a chain just off of a few changes that they could make.”
‘Putting Us on the Map’
Fallah Heard grew up in Byram with a single mother and an older brother. She had a great upbringing, she said, so much so that she still resides in Byram today—with her son enrolled in the same Byram School District that taught her. She gives all the praise to her grandmother and mother for her instilling a love of food and cooking into her.
“My grandma cooks a lot. Even to this day, can’t nobody beat her fried chicken. It’s her seasoning, (and) she still won’t tell me (the spice mix) even though I’m her granddaughter,” Heard said with a laugh. “That’s our joke: I tell her that I hope this recipe is written down in the book somewhere.”
A lot of people travel through Jackson, but some don’t think to stop in Jackson for food, opting instead to stop in an adjacent state. Adding to the attention that Jackson has received lately as a culinary hub, Heard hopes that the work she does is helping to change that narrative and amplify the diverse food landscape here.
“I like the fact that I put my content out there and that (when people) look up something to eat in Jackson … I pop up,” she said. “I like the fact that this is exposing us, and it’s putting us on the map just a little bit more of the fact that we have great food just like any other state.”
For her reviews, Fallah the Foodie first attempts to message the restaurants directly, but 90% of the time, they read her message and don’t respond, she said. Not feeling deterred, she’ll still patronize the restaurant and give an honest review. Sometimes, restaurants are more lenient, allowing her to get behind-the-scenes content in the kitchen for her videos.
“When I get into restaurants, I come out of my shell a little bit, and I try to show people what I do,” Heard said. “They’ll say ‘Let me ask my manager’ or ‘You can come back and do it a different day.’”
Heard feels like there are a multitude of variables at play for why restaurants might be hesitant to work with her. Most of the places are run by older people, who aren’t social-media savvy, for example, and they don’t always understand how the exposure could benefit them. Another reason for their caution could be that they think it’s a scam, Heard surmised, though she makes sure to explain what she does and include her information so that they know she’s legit.
‘Don’t Matter the Appearance’
While she has had many great experiences, some of her favorite places Heard has reviewed using her Fallah the Foodie account have been The Village Kitchen for their wings; The Crooked Letter for their philly cheesesteak; Martin’s for their fish; Chef Adrian Esco for his ribeye steak; and Skeetburger Snackshop in Wesson, located about 45 minutes outside of Jackson, for their burgers.
“I did Martin’s (Downtown) three weeks ago. I went back to Martin’s again to do a breakfast video. They were telling me they had people coming in from three hours away to try the food,” she described. “I did another (review) a week ago (where) I talked to the chef … who made $30,000 over the weekend.”
Heard appreciates the way her platform allows her to bring exposure to restaurants and to positively help her community. Most of the places she reviews could be considered hole-in-the-wall type of places that perhaps aren’t always the most “showy” among Jackson’s many restaurant options.
“I always make my little jokes like, ‘Sometimes you gotta go to the hood for the good food because it don’t matter the appearance as long as the food is good,’” she said. “I like the fact that some of these people have been in the restaurant business for years and never got the exposure they needed.”
In the future, Fallah Heard hopes she can get enough time off from her full-time job in the insurance sector to travel to the Mississippi Gulf Coast and explore its culinary scene. She also wants to travel to different states for food reviews at some point. On the home front, she plans to continue the food-truck festival she started this year to coincide with her July 21 birthday, expanding on the idea with what she learned from the inaugural event.
“The festival was on July 19th. I had around 16 food trucks and 10 to 15 small vendors. I rented out a parking lot and let everybody come in and it turned out successful,” she explained. “The only thing was it was hot. So I did learn a lot from it. I know my next one is either gonna be in the fall or a nighttime type of thing.”
To learn about what great restaurants are in Jackson and surrounding cities, follow Fallah the Foodie on her TikTok and Instagram.