The hot-ticket item this weekend in Center City wasn’t a dinner-for-two at Friday Saturday Sunday or 1-900-ICE-CREAM‘s latest unhinged flavor, but rather a 16-ounce plastic deli container of beans.
TikTok’s “Dense Bean Salad Girl” — 25-year-old San Franciscan Violet Witchel — made her Philadelphia debut Saturday from a pink tent at the corner of 19th and Walnut Streets. “I’m so happy you’re doing a Philly pop-up,” one fan told the food-fluencer before asking for a selfie.
A dense bean salad, or DBS, is exactly what the name implies: a robust mélange of various beans, veggies, and a protein doused in vinaigrette that promises to be satisfying and stowable throughout the workweek. Witchel, who has 2.8 million followers on TikTok, went viral for her original legume-laden recipe in 2024. That video has been viewed more than 13.5 million times on the platform.
“Two years ago, protein was very much trending,” Witchel told The Inquirer, “then that kind of started to go out of vogue and fiber became the big thing.
“I got lucky because the dense bean salad had protein and fiber.”
Beans are the zeitgeist: Social media dietitians are constantly hawking the next, new miracle nutrient. “Fibermaxxing” — or loading up on fibrous foods — started filling up feeds last year, and “BeanTok” — a sliver of the internet promoting daily bean intake — took off.
“It just feels easy, healthy, fresh,” said DBS devotee Alexa Hoffman, 33, of Manayunk.
Cason Walker, 34, of Roxborough added: “It’s versatile and it’s made my life easier.”
Northern Liberties couple Arden Edgerton, 28, and Scott Hirshman, 29, said the dish is approachable.
While a DBS is usually DIY (home cooks may swap ingredients or substitute proteins), Witchel on Saturday was offering takeout containers of her signature salads — steak chimichurri, sundried tomato, miso edamame, or sesame cabbage kimchi — ranging from $14 to $22.
Witchel presold more than 200 salads and ran out of what was available for day-of purchase within half an hour, making Philly her biggest pop-up to date. In total, Witchel and Natalie Pelosi, of SIMPLi — a local organic pantry brand that supplied the beans — said nearly 50 pounds of dry chickpeas and gigante beans and gallons of oil went into the salads.
“I’m blown away by how many Philly people knew her, anticipated her, and showed up with a huge smile on their face because they were getting to meet this [beloved social media] person,” said Corie Moskow, executive director of Rittenhouse Row, which hosted Witchel. “It’s so wholesome — I mean, it’s beans!”
Witchel said followers had been prodding her to come to the City of Brotherly Love; her husband is a Villanova University alum and they have friends in the city, she said. She called Philadelphians “the nicest people on Earth” and praised Enswell’s latte. Witchel was still on the hunt for a gluten-free cheesesteak as of Saturday morning.
“The people have been lovely, the food has been great,” she said. “The city itself is gorgeous.
“I love Philly.”