Black Girls Explore DC: A Food Lover's Guide

In 2018, Cornelia Poku knew social media had more potential outside of sharing filtered selfie photos. She wanted to form a community. Her chosen medium? Food. Fast forward to 2025 and Poku has grown her presence through Black Girls Explore DC to 68,000 followers across Instagram, TikTok and Bluesky. Beyondish spoke with Poku about how she got started sharing D.C’s foodie hotspots and how she balances working in marketing, communications and public relations full-time, while managing her social media gig part-time.

When did you start your social media journey and what was the inspiration?

I started Black Girls Explore DC in 2018 and wanted to create content because I enjoyed the Instagram app. At the time, [Instagram] started to take off as people used it as more than just a photo-sharing app. You could connect with people and share new ideas. Businesses and companies were using it. I wanted to learn too, and I didn’t have a business or anything I could use Instagram for. So I thought, okay, maybe I could start creating content about something I enjoy. Food was the natural first thing because I’ve always taken pictures of my food.

What does a typical content day look like?

I have a lot of content on TikTok that’s front camera facing, so I have days I’ll film multiple of those videos. I have scripts, I’ll script those out. I might have the energy to do two or three of those a day. Then, for example, this past Saturday I’ll stack restaurants. I have done that for the past two Saturdays. I’ll stack a bunch of activities and spend my entire day going to those places and recording content. Then, throughout the week I’ll piecemeal the videos together. On a normal working week I might do it every other day. I’ll have a restaurant visit after work.

Amazing! How do you deal with being so visible?

I think everyone is extremely nice. Except for the handful of keyboard warriors, 90% of the time I ignore them. When I first started, people were not doing content with their faces. Everybody was only doing the food. Maybe if you were lucky you would see a hand here or there, but nobody was putting their face in their content. I had no idea what that would turn into, but I enjoy talking to people. I enjoy meeting people. I enjoy learning about people, having conversations and connecting with people.

You’re Ghanaian American, DC born and raised and your husband is Jamaican. Can you tell our readers what inspired you to prioritize featuring one Black-owned business every Friday in 2024?

I noticed that in the previous year I visited many different restaurants, but I saw a redundancy in the types of places that I was going. I would have a week only eating pizza or tacos and going to restaurant groups. So I was thinking about what ways I could diversify and challenge myself to go to different areas, different corners of the D.C. area, meet small businesses that don’t have the PR capacity to reach out and invite me for a meal or send me a press release or a pitch or whatever. I was thinking back to the summer of 2020. Everyone was doing Black-owned businesses. It faded. It felt like people were moving on from that period. I thought, you know what, that’s what I want to do. I want to challenge myself to reprioritize Black-owned businesses and not just feature them, but spend my money in those places as well. A good amount of my content is gifted, but I didn’t want that to be my only priority.

How do you balance wanting to have fun with food while being public-facing?

I try to be myself, and see being online as an escape. I think in my experience, when I talk with my girlfriends and stuff, like we’re Black and we deal with these things all of the time and we can’t let it consume us. If I never get bigger than the community I’ve already cultivated, that’s fine. I don’t need everyone to like me. I don’t need everyone to find me to be engaging or mainstream. I will talk about what is important and interesting to me, and the people who want to come will come. I’ll feature Black-owned restaurants and maybe on my stories every once in a while, I’ll talk about the reality of existing in this plane. I want to have fun and connect with people at the end of the day.

We’re so glad we discovered you at Beyondish. Any special message for your followers?

I’m so deeply grateful. I’m so honored that people think that anything I say is interesting. When people come up to me in person and say they bookmarked videos or look at my page, it makes me want to cry. It doesn’t get old. I’m so thankful for people’s kindness and positively thinking of me. Like I said, I don’t deal with a lot of negativity. People have somehow found me and we are creating a community, going out and hopefully making new connections with each other and the people around us.