By Stacie Boyls | Arts & Life Writer
Three out-of-state freshmen walked into North Russell Hall one fateful August day. They began a friendship over a card game of “Exploding Kittens” that would later spark a campus-wide sensation in the form of a TikTok account under the name “NoRo Food Reviews.”
Coopersburg, Pa., freshman Andrew “Drew” Thomas, Phoenix freshman Felix Hall and Boston freshman Kyle Campbell make up the squad behind noro.food.reviews, a TikTok account dedicated to rating Baylor dining hall food.
“We all lost [Exploding Kittens] and it was like … we all won at the same time,” Campbell said. “We won at the game of friendship.”
The account was meant as a casual documentation of their first weeks at college, according to Hall.
“We just thought, ‘What if we start making this channel where we do food reviews?’” Hall said. “That’d just be fun.”
The first few videos featured Hall and Campbell alone, and garnered a few clicks and passing scrolls, but once Thomas was added to the mix, the page began to take off in the group’s outer circles, with videos reaching up to 20k views.
“Triangles are the strongest shape,” Thomas said. “We all tie it together.”
The first memorable review took place at Penland Dining Hall, the trio’s favorite place to eat on campus. Thomas said the group fiercely defends Penland, not just for its food variety, but for the cultural atmosphere the hall creates between cuisine, students, faculty and staff.
“It’s the biggest dining hall — the most welcoming, just a giant melting pot of people,” Thomas said.
Hall said the group’s approach to reviews isn’t planned ahead of time; they just hit the record button and critique on their in-the-moment observations.
“We want to shed some light on the workers every day, and on the food and everyday life of freshmen,” Hall said.
The page has since gained traction across campus. Hall said one of his leaders in a pre-med class shared their video with all the other students.
“I definitely expected my close friends to think it was funny,” Hall said. “But now, people come up to us that we don’t even know and tell us they saw our videos.”
Even amidst rumored competition from a “South Russell food review” page, the group said they remain confident they will stay at the top of Baylor and Waco food reviews.
“We have no rivals,” Thomas said. “Pretty much on top.”
The trio said they have plans to expand to Instagram reels, hoping to reach a larger audience.
“We might start posting a few reels, like re-upload the ones we already have and then maybe upload them at the same time,” Hall said. “We have some plans for future episodes.”
Other plans include finally trying the food at Memorial Dining Hall and hopefully expanding their reviews to local Waco food stops. The group also hinted at an intramural flag football team with its own social media spinoff.
“We are also going to be expanding a little bit in our universe of content by starting an intramural flag football team where we will be having a social media [and] Instagram account and uploading clips, stats, videos — a little bit similar to what we do with the food reviews, but just for football,” Hall said.
