Eating with Tod’s Christmas market is being absolutely rinsed, and it’s about time

We all know the face. The exaggerated grin, the aggressive burger-pulling, and the frantic smushing of market food into a mouth that apparently never tastes anything bad. Toby Inskip, better known to his 2.1 million followers as Eating with Tod, has built an empire on making every viral London food spot look like a religious experience.

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The problem is that Tod’s “reviews” have long felt more like ads than actual advice. We’ve all watched him hop from one paid partnership to the next, getting the red-carpet treatment at spots that are mediocre for everyone else. While he’s getting the prime cuts for free, his followers are paying a premium for the scraps. He’s become the ultimate food world sell-out, but while you can hide a bad burger behind a filtered TikTok transition, you can’t hide a chaotic, soul-less Christmas market.

The tod-ification of London’s food scene has finally hit a wall. His festive feast Christmas market at Tottenham Court Road is currently being dragged across TikTok and Instagram, with visitors describing it as a chaotic, overpriced mess. It’s about time the bubble burst.

Expectation vs. Harsh Reality

@eatingwithtod TODS FESTIVE FEAST 🎅 We set ourselves the mission this year to reinvent the Xmas Market. With no entry fee, proper food and proper chefs. We are learning every day, and every day the market gets better and better. This is the start of something special ❤️ Big thank you to all the traders which are announced in this video, it’s long hours, not the best weather and everyone is smiling, having a lovely time and creating a truly unique moment. The market it located outside Tottenham Court Road station just off Oxford street. I also have the Tod’s Hot Toddy on the menu where every £1 is donated to Motor Neurone Disease charity (MND association) which is a charity that’s very close to my heart. Can’t wait to see you all down there for a festive drink! The markets open from 10am to 10pm every day until 28th December. 📍 Outernet #christmas #london #londonfood #christmasmarket #xmas ♬ original sound – turbogrosik

Tod promised “proper food by proper chefs”. He posted curated, mouth-watering reels of cinnamon buns and BBQ burgers that made the market look like a festive wonderland. The reality, according to people who actually shelled out the cash, is a bit more… B&Q car park.

Visitors have reported “extremely bright, harsh lighting” that kills any semblance of a Christmas vibe, piles of rubbish, and, in a cardinal sin for a food market, nowhere to sit. One TikToker went viral for showing the “reality” of the market: Long queues, empty stalls that ran out of food before 6pm, and a total lack of festive music.

@molsonthehols Tod’s festive feast Xmas market was dissapointing to say the least… -long queue, no seating area -no Christmas music or any festive atmosphere -some stalls shut before 6pm -extremely bright lights that made everything feel distorted in the busy crowds Not a vibe:( #fyp #london #christmas #letdown #dissapointed ♬ Monkeys Spinning Monkeys – Kevin MacLeod & Kevin The Monkey

One commenter didn’t hold back, saying: “It wasn’t giving Christmas markets, it was giving a couple of display sheds in B&Q.”

The problem with ‘influencer’ food

The backlash hits on a deeper frustration we’ve all felt. As an influencer, Tod gets the “VIP” version of everything. He gets the burger when the grill is fresh and the lighting is perfect; the rest of us get the £13 version that’s been sitting under a heat lamp while we stand in the rain because there are no tables.

@thegreedydick Some of the worst food I’ve ever eaten There is a particular kind of London disappointment that arrives when something promises spectacle but delivers only cold concrete. This market leans hard on the idea of curation, a word borrowed from museums and dropped into the content economy, but the experience on the ground tells you more about how taste collapses when it is passed through a lens first. What looks ecstatic in a clipped vertical frame becomes oddly thin in the hand, and the gap between the two is where you begin to feel the season turning flat. The truth is that London has always had a parallel food culture. One half of it belongs to markets and kitchens built by people who care about flavour even on their worst days, and the other half belongs to the parts of the city increasingly designed as backdrops. Outernet is the latter. Everything competes with the screens. It pulls you out of your body, away from the warmth, the steam, the small rituals of sharing food in winter. The rain makes that distance even starker. You stand there holding something engineered to photograph beautifully, and it tastes like it has forgotten to be food. None of this is about personalities. It is about what happens when the logic of the internet seeps into the physical world and we mistake visibility for discernment. Influencers are not finished, but the contract between image and reality is beginning to fray, and markets like this expose the seam immediately. I think of all the places in London where craft still matters, where cooks sweat in tiny kitchens because the dish has to land on the tongue, not on the feed. That is the London I care about, and the one I want to keep alive. #londonhotspots #londonfood #londonfoodie #londonblogger ♬ original sound – Richard Crampton-Platt

Critics are now accusing the 30-year-old, who attended the £18,000-a-year Princethorpe College, of “rage-baiting” and prioritising his bank account over authenticity. With his PR firm, Gobble PR, reportedly sitting on over £300,000, and a string of tiny food festivals charging up to £37.50 a ticket, the “man of the people” act is wearing thin.

It’s time for some honesty

From parading live crabs in front of cameras to charging £6 for a single cinnamon bun in a market that feels like a backstreet, the festive feast has exposed the gap between TikTok aesthetics and real-life quality.

People are tired of being sold a dream by people who don’t have to pay for the nightmare. If this market’s failure means we finally get fewer “over-exaggerated facial expressions” and more honest reviews, then it’s the best Christmas gift we could have asked for.

The Tab has reached out to Tod for comment.

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Featured image credit: Instagram/@eatingwithtod, TikTok/@molsonthehols