9: A Post-Pandemic Interview with To Sultne Piger

Their identities are secret, their photos are crappy, and they occasionally review the state of the toilets. But Two Hungry Girls are giving Copenhagen's critics and influencers a run for their money

Hi there, 

If you’re in Copenhagen, you may have noticed that yesterday was the competition and awards ceremony for Årets Ret (Dish of the Year), an annual contest judged by several of Denmark’s most esteemed restaurant critics, who of course somehow manage to maintain their objectivity and fresh perspective even though they’ve been in the job for years if not decades and are friendly with most of the chefs they write about.

And then there’s To Sultne Piger (Two Hungry Girls). On one of those days last week that made you think the city had somehow taken a wrong turn straight into November, we talked with the girls behind the Instagram account) with decidedly refreshing approach to restaurant criticism.* We had first started following them around the time they described an unfortunate run-in with a lobster cracker and a male waiter with PMS-ish behavior that left them feeling “psychotically stupid.” By then, they had only been reviewing Copenhagen restaurants for about nine months, yet had already amassed a sizable following. It’s not hard to see why: their criticism is sharply observed, refreshingly honest, and almost always funny—if occasionally brutal.

Since then, To Sultne Piger have launched a podcast and acquired nearly 30,000 followers. It’s a pretty remarkable trajectory for two women with little culinary background (one comes from a family that likes to cook and eat out adventurously;  the other doesn’t. One worked as a server for a few years; the other didn’t. Both have careers in a field unrelated to food), and who started the account on a wine-fueled whim last summer between lockdowns. But even more remarkable —given, you know, the world — are the standards to which they hold themselves. They review restaurants both upscale (Maison, Iluka) and not (Chiky Grill; the bagel shop on the corner). They maintain their anonymity. They pay their own way. And they do it, they say, not to make money or get famous, but just because it’s fun. “The number of followers is just not that interesting to me,” one of them told us. “We do this for us. And if we don't want to do it anymore, we're just gonna stop.” 

You know what else is gonna stop? The Bord gravy train. For us to keep this thing alive and still pay our rent, we need your support, and we don’t mean just morally (though that’s nice too). So as of the next issue, we’ll be putting up a paywall. After that, at least one issue every month will remain free to everyone, but much of the content will require a subscription to read. The price is $6 a month or $60 a year, but if you’re in the industry and can’t afford that, let us know and we’ll work something out.

As always, thanks for reading.

*Actually, we only talked with one. The other was out of town and answered our questions via email

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The Post-Pandemic Interview: To Sultne Piger

You guys launched To Sultne Piger in the summer of 2020, after the first lockdown. How did all this come about, and was there any relationship to the pandemic? 

Hungry Girl #1: Last summer, we were on Bornholm for summer vacation, and we went to a restaurant in a very fancy, nice hotel where they have this outdoor terrace patio where we had lunch. We were already a little hungover and hadn't really had enough water and we shared a bottle of wine. And you know how you get smarter and smarter as you drink? About halfway through the bottle I was like, did you notice there's no music? And my colleague said, “And the drinking glasses are very small.”  We just kept commenting on our experience like that throughout the meal. And then at one point she said, should we just make an Instagram? I asked her why and she said, ‘Well, we don’t really have any hobbies, and I feel like this fall is going to be really boring with everything shutting down.’ So it just started as something fun to do that f wasn't work related. I'm not a very creative kind of person. I’m not going to be knitting or crocheting, and I killed my sourdough--I’m just not that kind of person. So this was a nice social experience and it’s made us think more about what we eat and be more aware of what's on the plate. That’s it: there was no forethought, just a good bottle of wine. 

And the name? Where did that come from?

Hungry Girl #2: Girl 1 had a habit of always saying, "Hi, we're two hungry girls, do you have a table for us?" whenever she booked a table at the last minute, so that was how the name came about. She doesn't say that anymore. 

What was your relationship with food and restaurants before then? Did you consider yourselves foodies? 

Hungry Girl #2: I've always considered going to restaurants as the most convenient way to treat myself in everyday life. It's great alone; it's great with a partner;  it's great with a bunch of friends, it's great all times of the day— I could continue like this forever. I didn't consider myself a foodie, and I still don't; I consider myself a very curious person, and I absolutely love to discover new places, new menus and the people behind it all. But eating in restaurants that much—sometimes every day of the week—I feel like I have a great catalogue of experiences to back my opinions, whether they are positive or negative. Is that what a foodie is? Girl #1, however, is definitely a foodie in a more nerdy way. She can spend hours looking at cookbooks and watching Masterchef Australia.  I don't do that, because it makes me so, so hungry. 

What’s your process? How do the two of you work together? 

Hungry Girl #1: We take turns with the writing and photos. When we're out eating together, we talk about the food, and we take notes when we remember. With pictures, we have a one-click policy. Because if the food is cold, and it’s because I’ve been taking pictures of it, it’s my fault, so I can’t really bitch about it. That's why a lot of the pictures are so bad: it’s a quick process. I'm not gonna sit there to get the perfect lighting, and we don't do any editing or anything. I mean, who cares what the food looks like? You can think yourself to the rest. 

When did you realize that To Sultne Piger was taking off--that you were getting some traction? 

Hungry Girl #1: This is gonna sound stupid, but it didn't really strike me that this was a thing until newspapers started contacting us--and that was maybe three months ago. I mean,  the number of followers is just not that interesting to me. But I think our biggest milestone was when somebody who wasn’t one of our friends started following us. We had maybe 20 followers at that point, and I was like, how did they find us? We didn’t have any mutual friends, or anything. 

And now you have something like 30,000 followers. What do you think people are responding to? 

Hungry Girl #2:  Our tone of voice can be read as rude, but it is actually just the way we would speak or write to each other. And even though it might come off as very direct sometimes, it is just how we like to do it, and it's also what our friends and followers tell us are the best thing about the profile. I think the tone of voice, the indifference towards grammar and the bad photos are so unlike most foodie instagram accounts. Apparently we filled a gap. 

Hungry Girl #1:  We have found that a lot of people follow our little Instagram project like us because they get kind of the truth. They say it's like talking to a friend as they review their dinner. It’s not super snobby, you understand the language. We’re  not trying to pretend that we have this huge professional knowledge about food. We try to stick to what we do know and understand. 

You also have strong opinions--and you’re not afraid to state them. Do you think that’s something people are responding to? 

Hungry Girl 1: Other people have said that to me, and I’ve gone back to read our stuff, and it's not that intense. Do you think it just seems like we have very strong opinions because everybody else doesn't? Is it just because everybody says, ‘This is amazing,’ and doesn't touch upon the bad aspects? It seems like a lot of people are more lenient. We've had some experiences where there's been a food critic who’s been to the same place, and I was like, wait a minute, what's happening here? Why did you not comment on this, because I thought that was kind of crazy. It’s really important to give a nuanced review of your experience, you can't just stick to the good stuff. 

One of the things that’s striking about is that even though you’re both young, you’re doing things in a pretty old-school way. For one thing, you preserve your anonymity--that’s something that used to be important for restaurant critics, but now everyone’s sort of given up on. Why does it matter to you? 

Hungry Girl #2: One of my friends described following To Sultne Piger as carrying me around in her pocket, always being able to see what I would recommend and whatnot. I feel like that's the most significant thing about the profile - we could be anyone, and anyone is sometimes better than a specific someone. But that wasn't why we chose to be anonymous, actually, we just didn't really consider going "public", I guess? I mean, it's really not about us.  But now I am REALLY glad we didn't pour our own faces and names all over the profile, I would really hate to be recognized at a restaurant and get special treatment or something like that, that gives me total cringe. 

And unlike a lot of influencers and even professional journalists you pay for everything yourself--no comps, no invitations, no freebies disguised as ‘partnerships’ or ‘collabs.’ Why did you make that decision? 

Hungry Girl #1: We actually talked about that from the beginning.  The whole influencer, gifted culture, especially on Instagram--it feels so inauthentic when you say, “Oh, invited, yeah we were here, it was great.” It's like you're paid to say that.  But on the other hand “Invited. I was here, the food was not so great,” is still kind of hollow. No matter what you say, your audience is going to be like she was paid, so either she's trying to make the brand happy or she's trying to make us happy by convincing us that she's so authentic. We just didn't want to buy into that whole thing. And again, that’s because it's not really a career project for us; it's just for fun. We don't really need to make the money off it. I already earn money from my job. So it's like there's not really the need to grow in the same way as I think some influencers--not gonna mention any names.

Now that you’ve got a big following, how do you feel about the power that comes with it? You can kind of make or break restaurants, so to speak. How do you navigate that responsibility?

Hungry Girl #2: It is definitely a big responsibility. But I also feel a big responsibility to tell our followers how our experience actually was, and not wrap it in forced positivity. If I had a crap experience, I’m gonna write that it was crap. Also the comment area is totally open, that is also a very beautiful thing about this type of democratic restaurant reviewing - people and restaurants are VERY welcome to write in the comments if they agree or disagree. We want to know if our experience was a flash in the pan, and our followers can tell us that in the comments.

Hungry Girl #1: We make sure that if we write a bad review, we discuss it very thoroughly. It’s super important that we're able to back up our points, because if you have to say something that you know it's going to hurt the restaurant, you really need to have a reason for it. But this whole idea of sparing restaurants? We had an experience, not too long after lockdown ended where we went to a restaurant that I had never been to before. Many of my friends had been there though, and they all said it was mediocre to bad. I was like, you know what? It can't be that bad. And we got a table there on re-opening night, and the food was not great, and the service was not great. It wasn't that busy, and the waiter seemed to know what they were doing. So I was like, okay, you haven't changed the whole staff. You don't have the excuse of being completely slammed. And the food is still sucky. We’ve since learned that restaurant reviewers wait maybe a month or so when a restaurant opens. But this was not a new restaurant, and it didn't seem like there was a new crew. So, should we not review it? And all the other people who sat there that evening and probably the next consecutive evenings? They just have to suck it up? 

What about the future? You’ve already added a podcast, do you have plans to expand To Sultne Piger in other ways? 

Hungry Girl #1: Well, we’re thinking about offering some merch. But I mean, we both have careers in life. There isn't some big scheme or plan or idea for the future, it’s literally a fun hobby for us.

But if you were offered a job as a professional restaurant critic, is that something that you would want to do? 

Hungry Girl #1:  I really like my day job.

Last question: What has surprised you the most about this whole experience? 

Hungry Girl #2: That people write to us that we are hilarious, seriously what the fuck. Also some of the DM's we got from chefs who HIGHLY DISAGREE with our experience. I mean, I get that it's frustrating, but some of them write very, very angry and very, very long messages to us, saying that it's incorrect that the prices are too high or that the fries weren't good. This is also a very what-the-actual-fuck experience. And last but not least, I'm very surprised that we get the question about our food budget sooooo many times. Apparently it's not normal to eat as much in restaurants as we do, and we get asked all the time how we can afford it. We are NOT loaded, everyone can do this. Just skip pension savings, fitness subscription and kids. Haha.