A Chinese restaurant in St. Louis had a troubling run-in with one our own, an L.A.-based food addict who goes by @antonio_eats_la to his 218,000+ Instagram followers and observant KTLA audiences.
Xin Wei, the owner of family-run Corner 17, is no stranger to adversity, having left a childhood of poverty behind in China for the States at 17 and coming back from the closure of his first restaurant in 2007 to open this place in St. Louis' Delmar Loop neighborhood.
The latest challenge to his dreams arrived in the form of one Antonio Malik, an L.A.-based food-influencer with a relatable penchant for tacos and noodles.
Wei tells the St. Louis Post Dispatch that Malik recently DM'd him with an offer: If Corner 17 would credit him $100 on his bill, he would shoot some of the food being prepared and post some footage to his Instagram.
Wei was not interested, finding his restaurant sufficiently busy and not fully seeing the picture of how an L.A. blogger was going to help his business in the 'Lou. Wei responded politely with his apologies and let Malik know the collaboration wasn't going to work for him.