These sisters are eating their way through the Big Apple, and they’re not holding back on their comments about Manhattan’s culinary landmarks.
The Shapiro sisters – Sara, 32, Madison, 29, Carly, 28, and Julia, 21 – run the popular social media snacking account @sistersnacking, which has amassed nearly half a million followers on both Instagram and TikTok.
Taking the Glastonbury, Conn. native. it can be sweet, but also salty – especially in their “Iconic or Overrated” series, where they visit legendary restaurants of the Big Apple.
“Is it worth waiting in line for Katz, we’d say yes, but is it worth spending $1 billion on Peter Luger? We came back and did not have a good meal and were very disappointed. It was a big thing that brought a lot of opinions,” Carly told The Post.
“People get so upset, they say, ‘I’ve been eating here since I was 12. How dare you?”
“We have a lot of words like ‘Go back to Ohio’ and ‘You guys are kids; you don’t know anything about food,” Madison added.
The sisters, who are attending FoodieCon, part of the NYC Food and Wine Festival, on Oct. 19 also ate at Carbone — declaring that the hot Italian restaurant isn’t worth the hype.
“I think originally the food was good, but it got so touristy that they just didn’t care,” said Madison, who calls Hoboken home.
Rao’s, an East Harlem landmark, remains iconic, the sisters said, listing the delicious old-school Italian dishes they ordered.
“Chicken scarpariello, meatballs, they have this pesto pasta. Even the penne vodka alone was perfectly made,” Madison said.
The “soft” burger at the original JG Melon, however, is overrated, they said.
“No spice,” Madison said. “We’ve also taken the chili and they just put chunks of American cheese on it. Sometimes the grilled cheese isn’t completely melted.”
The girls, who can make five figures for a post, also get the comment that they’re using “daddy’s money” to fund their dining escapades.
“We literally take our money and reinvest it and buy food so we can create content for you to watch,” Madison said of their videos, which include 15 Best Burgers in NYC; Ultimate Food Crawl Flushing, Queens; Everything we ate in Williamsburg and 48 hours in Montauk.
Their bread and butter comes from partnerships with brands like Amazon, McDonald’s, Pepsi, American Express, Uber Eats and DoorDash.
“I would say brand partnerships are the biggest part of the revenue. But we also get paid from ad revenue on our website and on our TikTok videos, we get paid for views,” Madison explained.
Both Madison and Carly, along with their older sister, Sara, work at @sistersnacking full-time, while the youngest, Julia, is a senior at Syracuse University.
The girls started @sistersnacking in 2015 on Instagram, but it was during the pandemic — while quarantined together in their childhood home in Connecticut — that they found their recipe for success.
“We did reviews in Connecticut. . . and we started building this really credible following here because we were traveling and finding where to get food. And it was really cool to see that it had an impact on restaurants back then,” Madison said.
In June 2020, they started sharing videos on TikTok. The post that put them on the map was in December 2021, when they featured Skirt Steak, which had just opened in NoMad.
“It was $29 for steak, unlimited fries, salad. And so we posted it and it went mega viral at the time, like six million views,” Madison recalls.
The restaurant, which “was dead and really quiet” when they dined there, also enjoyed an increase in clientele.
“There were lines of people for hours,” said Madison, who previously worked in partnerships and sales for UberEats and digital partnerships at Shake Shack.
The girls, whose followers now include chef Bobby Flay, have become famous.
“We were walking in London and this guy ran up to us,” Carly said. And he said, ‘I’m sorry, I just love Sister Snacking. I had to come and say hello.”
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Image Source : nypost.com