Our relationship with food has drastically changed amid the pandemic. And for many of us who missed the familiarities of consuming delightfully prepared dishes and palate-tickling desserts, content creators have provided a source of company, solace, and entertainment during periods of uncertainty. Of the niches that are prevalent on TikTok, food is one of the major players. Within that competitive field, 22-year-old Abi Marquez, publicly known as TikTok's “Lumpia Queen,” may just be the brightest star of them all.

Prior to her social media fame, Abi was juggling a boatload of school requirements during her final year as a Hotel, Restaurant, and Institution Management (HRIM) student at the University of the Philippines – Diliman. As a way to blow off creative steam and destress from university life, Abi started making food videos on TikTok. 

“I discovered this platform during my last semester in college. Since I love taking videos and cooking food, I decided to enter the world of content creation,” she told The Beat Asia in an exclusive interview, one hump day in July.

Abi’s food videos, in which she experiments with different lumpia combinations, consistently amass more than 2 million views. One of her early uploads, a video about frying marshmallows in lumpia wrappers, catapulted her to become one of the biggest names in the “FoodTok” universe. 

“Lumpia entered the picture accidentally. I saw marshmallows and lumpia wrappers on our kitchen counter and decided to experiment with them. I filmed a video and kept it as organic as possible. I wanted my followers to see what the outcome would be, regardless if it's successful or not,” Abi said. 

The video, which dominated the “For You Page” (FYP) of TikTok users in early February, hit 1 million views just three days after it was released. “When I posted the video, I wasn’t really expecting it to blow up. My original intention was to archive my recipes. So when it went viral, I was like, ‘Oh my God! People appreciate this stuff?’ That’s when I decided to turn it into a series,” she recalled.

After noticing the sudden spike in her TikTok analytics, Abi hurriedly went to the market to stock up on lumpia wrappers and other ingredients she would later utilize for her cooking videos. “Suggestions from my followers just kept coming so I bought a lot of peaches, mangoes, and lumpia wrappers,” she said. “There’s so much clout in this concept and there’s already a demand, I just need to do it.” 

When she got home, Abi immediately set up her camera equipment and began filming what would be her most successful video yet, an episode answering the question “What happens if we make peach mango pie with lumpia wrappers?”, which has received nearly 30 million views since uploading it in March.

Her engaging antics and sincere enthusiasm didn’t just bring in clicks on TikTok, but also won the hearts of people outside of the video-sharing app. Every day since she posted her viral lumpia video, Abi receives hundreds of overwhelmingly positive comments and sweet messages from strangers, friends, and celebrities she never thought would ever know of her existence. One of them is Erwan Heussaff, a veteran food video creator with whom she luckily collaborated in a cooking series for the YouTube channel FEATR. 

“It was a dream of mine to meet him. I remember earlier this year I was just frying lumpia in my kitchen and now I’m on his platform with 3 million followers,” she said ecstatically.

As a result of her unstoppable internet success, graduating student Abi dismissed her goal of landing a position in the corporate world and started embracing the idea of content creation as a full-time career. “For the longest time, I was trying to aim for a corporate job, and I didn’t think of making TikTok videos as a career. Last June 3, I hit 1 million followers, and I took it as a sign that content creation is for me.”

Though Abi’s lumpia series remains her flagship content, this Laguna-based creator has also introduced other types of videos to her channel, including “What I Ate,” a mini-series featuring under-the-radar food hubs and restaurants, and one about sentimental Filipino childhood snacks. 

No matter what type of content she publishes, "Lumpia Queen” has her wildly supportive legion of followers hooked from start to finish, inspiring them to try out her unique recipes. “I create videos with my food encounters, whether it be recipes, experiments, or simply eating food that may be nostalgic to Filipinos."

In a sea of online celebrities vying for attention through curated posts, Abi, who is single-handedly running her TikTok account, managed to capture the hearts (and tummies) of her followers with her humor and authenticity. “I think it’s priceless when one is willing to show their true self to the camera. The mistakes I made while cooking, they’re all recorded and uploaded on my TikTok. I think those little things make me different from other creators,” Abi said.

“It was luck that gave me the resources to make a video series. It was luck that gave me the idea to fry marshmallows in lumpia that day. It was luck that brought me where I am today.”

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.