City boy gets 1 M Insta views for Dalgona coffee

HYDERABAD:  The South Korean coffee drink taking the internet by storm is the Dalgona coffee. This swirling frothy shot of coffee on top of iced milk, has turned everyone into a budding barista.With nowhere out to go, peeps on social media are uploading videos of their versions of the perfect cup of this coffee. One such video by a Hyderabadi has garnered over 1.05 million views on Instagram. Rameez Siddiqui, a food blogger with Insta handle @thehydfoodblog posted the video of his version of the Dalgona coffee on March 30 and it has gone viral. He claims it is the most viewed food video on Instagram in South India.

Rameez, who has been a food blogger for the past two years says, “On the first day itself, we got close to 5,000 views. Within the next two days we got 2,00,000 views. Followers kept rising exponentially, nearly 150+ everyday. In four days, we crossed 5,00,000 views. We reached one million views after just eight days.” Thrilled with the responses, Rameez who is a doctor by profession and a food blogger by passion said, “This is amazing for me as it shows so much love from my regular followers and from new ones who came through the hashtags.” An elated Rameez said Instagram insights showed that this was trending all over world.

What was the idea behind this video? He shares, “I was in a dilemma for two days post lockdown on what to post. Though I had content, but it wasn’t something my followers could relish in the foreseeable future.So I decided on a transition to homemade cooking. I came across this new South Korean coffee trend and gave it a shot.”  Using his sister-in-law’s help with whisking the coffee, he managed to get the consistency just right. He shares, “After adding milk, ice and whisked coffee, it looked exceptional, but as always, I wanted to add a personal touch.

So we added a little crushed Oreo powder and topped it off with an Oreo cookie.” In the video, what steals the show is when on adding the Oreo, the coffee starts to ooze out of the glass. He exclaims, “It helped create our unplanned showstealer! This I feel, is one of main reasons the video soared above other similar ones.”Queries on which coffee to use flooded his comments. He recommends instant coffee for the proper frothy texture. Rameez, the winner of Digital Influencer Award 2020, has other trending  videos on Insta. His preparation of Bellam Pootharekulu, the famous Telugu rice starch sweet, received 3,50,000 views.
Buoyed by this response, the 24-year-old Rameez plans to upload more videos of home cooked food, especially with Ramazan approaching. But first, we are inspired enough to reach for that instant jar of coffee.

— Tamanna S Mehdi  tamanna@newindianexpress.com  @tamannamehdi