1 week Ago
At home, Kiyana Phillips is seated, ready to devour a Japanese feast for her latest . In front of her is a whole spread of sashimi, tempura, California rolls, tamagoyaki, temaki and all the accoutrements. “Hey y’all, I got some sushi today, mhmm!” Phillips says before digging in.
But it’s not actually food — it’s paper made to look like a bountiful banquet of Japanese bites. On TikTok, where she's known as , the 21-year-old does mukbangs, a la , and more — all using illustrated paper sculpture. In a short time, Phillips has become a viral phenomenon: She boasts over 1 million followers on TikTok and another 424,000 on , and she launched this project in April 2024.
Her most viral clip, where she , garnered an astonishing 56 million views, and Instagram’s official account just , which racked up another 54 million. From , in which she eats a paper Chipotle burrito bowl and chips because she’s “broke,” Phillips has delivered a playful and artistic alternative to the avalanche of copycat food content online. Phillips estimates that her preoccupation with paper play began at age eight, out of boredom.
“Toys get boring, so you just start creating stuff yourself,” she tells TODAY.com over Zoom. “I was an artsy type of child, so I was always making paper crowns, using markers.
So, eventually, I just started putting things together.” Phillips is seated at the same desk she uses for her videos, proudly showing off some sashimi-in-progress. She says she mainly uses Crayola crayons, Sharpie markers, glue, tape and construction paper to make the grub in her videos.
When choosing what to immortalize in paper, Phillips looks to social media food trends and her own mother’s recipes. She also credits Korean creator as a contemporary. Phillips and Paper Pepper aren’t the only ones making names for themselves with paper cooking tutorials.
Creators like , and are captivating audiences with their paper feasts. Beyond paper, creators like , and are using the popular building block toy to create culinary art, and uses rubber and air to make “guacamole.” Phillips says planning is key: After choosing a dish or a theme, she lists out its components, writing down how the ingredients may change at every step of a recipe.
But she also likes to keep things loose. “It’s no steps when I’m making stuff,” she says. “I just freehand it however I think it will look and put it together, but I make everything piece by piece: seasonings, the sides, main course, details.
” Her tongue-in-cheek videos are now a well-oiled machine with their own visual and aural language: jump cuts to show bites being taken and ingredients being mixed, and sound effects to mimic crunchy breading, cracking eggs and sizzling pans. In early March, after her high school art teacher reached out to her, Phillips to teach students how to make her style of paper craft. “I had a lot of anxiety, but it was a fun learning experience, especially being that I’m trying to get into art education,” she says.
“Everybody was so happy to see me, the teachers, the administration. You could tell, they were proud, inspired. And they want me coming around a lot more.
” During her visit, her former teacher showed her a paper box she made as a student with three objects she desired: a bag of money, a camera and a Reese’s peanut butter cup. And, as Phillips celebrates — with Rihanna's beauty company Fenty Hair — it’s clear she’s manifested a very bright future out of paper. “I tell everybody you can always make something out of nothing, because I literally did,” Phillips says.
“It was something so simple, I put my imagination into the craft and it did so much for me.” Joseph Lamour is the food reporter at TODAY.com and is based in Washington D.
C..
