Why Is Everyone Smashing Salmon?

It’s safe to say that the pandemic has MEGA shifted our sense of normalcy and routine. But if the past year and a half has made anything clear - it’s that when all else fails, our internet food fascinations stay alive and well.

We started off with frothy whipped coffee. Then graduated to the infamous feta pasta. Now, a new dish has taken over our Tik Tok feeds, and along with it, a new aspirational lifestyle figure to obsess over. Insert: Emily Mariko and her ~smashed salmon-rice~.

Emily Mariko, who rose to internet fame with her viral salmon dish, is a 29-year old content creator from Los Angeles, California. She’s also a Colombia University grad, former-Facebook employee, and a connoisseur of healthy at-home recipes.

The recipe that catapulted her to our FYP vaguely involves heating up leftover salmon and rice (and an ice cube?), some smashing, and a layering of sauces, including soy sauce, sriracha, and mayo. The recipe itself - while we’ve heard it is delicious - seems irrelevant at this point. It’s watching Mariko actually COOK that ish that keeps us watching.

There are thousands of food bloggers on the internet. So what sets Mariko’s videos apart? For starters, her videos are nothing short of sensory overload. In Mariko’s world, vegetables just seem brighter, every bite has more crunch, and cooking is like a twelve-step self care ritual, rather than a necessary chore.

Making food-related content isn’t by any means niche, but Emily’s recipes appear nourishing in a way that many lifestyle influencers’ recipes just don’t. The ASMR aspect is engaging for sure - but if you stumbled upon Emily’s page to see what all the hype for some heated up salmon was about, you likely stayed because once you start watching her, it’s hard to look away.

In order to find out why we’re so obsessed with Emily, it’s important to recognize what she represents as an internet figure. She’s pretty without being intimidating or seeming overdone. Her kitchen is immaculate, and so are her outfits, always looking freshly washed. She seems like the kind of girl who when asked where her top was from, would actually tell you instead of claiming she forgot (stop gatekeeping your fits!!).

Also, everything about her videos is just so crisp. Rather than an influencer who makes us feel bad about ourselves (we all know who we are talking about *cough cough*), her videos make us feel like with just enough sriracha and athleisure, we too could be doing life the Emily Mariko way. As The Cut’s social-media editor Daise Bedolla put it, Mariko’s video hold ‘’the pleasure of watching someone do what you wish you had the energy for.’’

Just like every other TikTok fad, our fascination with Emily Mariko and her salmon will come and go. But in the meantime, if you’re looking for some time to kill, go to her page and feast your eyes.