Hi! I’m Kirby, the creator behind Eating With Kirby 👋🏻

If you’ve been following me for a while, you probably know two things about me: I really love food, and I really love talking about food.

Honestly, that’s how this whole journey started.

Back in 2011, while I was still in university, I started a little food blog because I couldn’t stop telling people about the restaurants I was trying. Instagram wasn’t really a thing yet, TikTok definitely didn’t exist, and food content wasn’t the massive industry it is today. In internet years, that basically makes me a dinosaur. 😂🦖

Before I had a blog, I was that friend who would constantly text people restaurant recommendations, tell family members where they needed to eat next, and spend hours reading restaurant reviews online.

I loved discovering hidden gems and sharing them with anyone who would listen. Eventually, I realized I needed a place to put all of these recommendations, so I started writing restaurant reviews and posting photos from a digital camera (yes, an actual digital camera) onto my blog.

What started as a hobby quickly became an obsession.

Over the years, I continued sharing restaurant reviews, travel experiences, recipes, and random snippets of my life simply because I loved doing it. I wasn’t thinking about followers, brand deals, or making a career out of it. I genuinely just loved connecting people with great food.

There’s something incredibly rewarding about recommending a restaurant, dish, or recipe to someone and hearing them come back saying, “That was amazing! I loved it!”. That feeling NEVER gets old, and honestly, it’s still what motivates me today. 🥹

As social media evolved, so did Eating With Kirby.

Today, Eating with Kirby has grown into a community of over 650,000 people across social media platforms, and I’ve been fortunate enough to become recognized as one of the largest food and travel creators in Vancouver and Canada. 🇨🇦 I have been a panelist for Air Canada’s Best New Restaurants, Cathay Members’ Choice Awards and have been interviewed for a few notable publications like Business Insider, Vancouver Magazine, and a TV travel and food show called Order’s Up with Hudson Yang.

Even typing this feels surreal.

For years, I balanced content creation alongside a full-time marketing career. Then in 2021, I made one of the biggest decisions of my life and left my traditional job to pursue content creation full-time.

It was terrifying.

I had no idea if it would work. I didn’t know if I could support myself doing something that, for most of my life, felt like a hobby. But I knew I wanted to spend my days creating, storytelling, eating incredible food, and sharing experiences with people.

Five years later, somehow, I’m still here doing exactly that.

What once felt like a ridiculous pipe dream of “I wish I could eat food, talk about food all day, and somehow get paid for it” has become my reality. In many ways, it has surpassed anything I could have imagined.

One of the biggest turning points came in 2023 when I posted my first viral rice cooker recipe. My One Pot Hainanese Chicken Rice recipe reached millions of views and introduced me to a whole new audience. What started as a single recipe quickly turned into a rice cooker series, then a 10-day rice cooker challenge, and eventually a community of people cooking alongside me from all over the world.

To this day, people still stop me and tell me they made one of my rice cooker recipes. And that will never stop being cool. 😎

The best part of all of this isn’t the views, the followers, or even the opportunities. It’s the people.

Every message, comment, recipe creation, restaurant recommendation request, and conversation reminds me why I started doing this in the first place. The reason I get to live out my dream job is because people choose to watch my videos, read my recommendations, trust my opinions, and support my journey.

I don’t take that for granted for a second.

And now, somehow, I get to add “cookbook author” to my list of titles, with my very first cookbook launching in Spring 2027. If university-aged Kirby, who was uploading restaurant photos from a digital camera, could see that, she probably wouldn’t believe it.

Whether you’ve been following along for over a decade or you just discovered me through a recipe, a restaurant recommendation, or one of my rice cooker videos, thank you for being here.

I’m so grateful you’re part of this journey.

Now, let’s go find something delicious to eat. ❤️

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