Zach Jack is everywhere.
Eating.
From Blue Island to Plainfield, Bronzeville to Glenview, Hyde Park to West Loop, and beyond.
Zachary Jackson, aka “Zack Jack,” is a Montessori music teacher by day, DJ and cover band singer by night, and food critic in between.
Over the past year and a half, the 34-year-old south suburban resident, a graduate of Morgan High School and St. Olaf College in Minnesota, has been building a name for himself as an omnipresent restaurant reviewer who visits eateries often overlooked by traditional media outlets.
He is part of a growing movement of self-appointed critics who publicly share their opinions across various platforms. Though Jackson is unvetted and uncredentialed by traditional media outlets, he says he is following his heart to see where it leads.
So far, he has amassed 10,000 followers on Facebook/Instagram and 16,000 on TikTok.
Jackson visits mostly suburban places, mostly unannounced and mostly on his own dime. He orders off the menu, shares the cost and videos himself eating the food while giving his take on it.
He’s reviewed tacos in Tinley Park, tuna hoagies in Country Club Hills, lobster rolls in Palos Park, tandoori chicken in Crestwood and cacio e pepe at Gibson’s Italia in Chicago.
Each video begins with his signature opening, “Hello, World,” and ends with “Toodles.”
“I love to eat,” Jackson said. “When social media came out, I saw other people reviewing food and I thought it was cool. I decided to try it myself because I have a lot of food knowledge and I’ve eaten at a lot of places.”
Jackson grew up with foodie parents and worked in restaurants, flipping burgers and frying chicken. When he was choosing a college major, he said, he vacillated between music and culinary arts.
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His grandparents owned restaurants and his grandfather was one of the first butchers to cut steaks for Morton Steakhouse.
Social media is a brave new world of amateur “experts” — regular people giving advice on everything from sneaker comfort to allergy relief. Though they cannot and should not take the place of credentialed advisors, particularly when it comes to medical advice, they are building a following.
Jackson is one of many Chicago area online food critics.
Others, including JovanApproved and Mario Turano, also have big followings. Some online reviewers appeal to very specific audiences or focus on specific types of cuisine, others strive for an “everyman” approach.
Jackson samples all kinds of cuisine. Among his latest stops is Moe Joe’s, a Cajun-Caribbean fusion eatery in Plainfield. He started with the Bayou Voodoo rum punch, corn bread with cinnamon butter and deep-fried bell peppers with buttermilk dressing. For entrees, he chose the alligator sauce piquante and the southern-fried frog legs.
He assigns a point value for each item, with 10 being the highest. He gave high marks to the cornbread and peppers. Regarding the piquante, he said, “Portion size was great. It had plenty of meat in it. The sauce was bright and tomatoey … I did wish there was a little more depth of flavor and the alligator was slightly overcooked –7.9.”
He visits eateries often overlooked by traditional restaurant critics, particularly those in the southern suburbs.
“That’s part of the reason I started making food reviews,” he said. “Lots of reviewers would focus on the city and downtown and northern suburbs but I always wondered, ‘How come no one ever comes south?’ We’ve got lots of food down here. I made that my focus because we have a need for it here.”
But his quest has also taken him to Glenview, Hinsdale, Joliet and Bolingbrook.
There’s nothing elitist about his picks either. He’s reviewed ice cream at Plush Horse in Palos Park and show popcorn at AMC Theatres in Crestwood as seriously as he’s critiqued king crab legs at Primal Cut Steakhouse in Tinley Park.
He has a list of hundreds of places he’d like to visit, and his work as a music performer takes him all over the Chicago area, where he often spies interesting places to review. Sometimes he brings his wife, Tamara, or his parents and sisters.
He also takes requests. All kinds. After viewers asked him to feature curry stew, he ordered goat meat from Amish Country Farms in Orland Park and made his own.
The connection with viewers, he says, can make a huge difference when anybody and everybody has access to producing the same kind of content.
He’s upfront about his personal food preferences or biases.
“I don’t prefer raw tomatoes on my sandwiches so I don’t order them. But I can envision that a tomato would have added more moisture to the sandwich. I do keep that in mind in my ratings,” he said.
And he edits the footage himself. “I don’t use AI. I want viewers to see me taking the bites. Trust is a huge thing.”
While most of the feedback is positive, he says, there are people who disagree with his opinion.
One of his favorite places, so far, has been The Original Shrimp House in Palos Park. “They have a really good lobster roll. The seafood is all very fresh,” he said.
Restaurant owner Tim Keefer said, in a difficult economy, social media food reviews can “change your life.”
For better or worse.
They can cause a stampede or “blow everything up and kill it if you’re not prepared,” Keefer said.
In the old days, he said, a restaurant would advertise or offer coupons and then prepare for a subsequent rush. Online critics can, within hours, send people to a restaurant’s door, or send them in a different direction.
The best way to deal with that, Keefer said, is to be prepared and be open to criticism.
“I can take criticism, if it helps,” he said. “If we’re wrong, we’ll only be become better by making changes.”
Jackson said he understands that restaurants are under a lot of pressure today.
“I want to be truthful but at same time I don’t necessarily want to tear down a business,” Jackson said. “I think a customer who is spending their money on a business has a right to certain standards. If a restaurant isn’t meeting those standards, people have a right to know. We should be able to hold them accountable. And let the restaurant know so maybe they can make the changes that are needed.
“I try to be constructive more than detrimental. My goal at the end of the day is to help,” he said.
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Though sometimes restaurant owners offer to comp his meal or invite him back to sample other menu items, Jackson says, so far, the venture has produced sparse income. Other than meager subscriptions and some TikTok rewards, he’s been covering the costs himself, making him dependent on his day job as a teacher and nighttime gig as a singer with the Doobie Brothers cover band, China Groove.
He hopes to someday make his love for food lucrative. He’d like to organize meet-and-greets and perhaps a food festival in the south suburbs.
Meanwhile, he said, “I’m just living out my passions.”
Donna Vickroy is an award-winning reporter, editor and columnist who worked for the Daily Southtown for 38 years. She can be reached at [email protected].