The Dish: After 17 years in prison, his next act is food influencer

How do you say “delicious”? Some people throw their heads back in ecstasy. Others smack their lips and say “mmmmmmm.” But when Douglas White tastes something particularly delectable, he shouts at the top of his lungs.

“I ain’t going back to jail, man!”

Locked up at 15 and released in 2024, the Edgewood-based foodie and influencer has turned his time in prison into a calling card. Under the handle @MealTicket_Nu, he tours restaurants in Baltimore and beyond, trying out trends and posting reviews for his hundreds of thousands of followers on TikTok and Instagram.

Eateries in Atlanta, Miami and New York have paid him to record his reaction to their fare. He always posts the results with the same title: “trying food after 17 years in prison.”

Each bite reinforces his wish to stay off the streets. In Maryland, where White spent 17 years behind bars, around 40% of people released from prison return within three years. He won’t be one of them. “I ain’t got no problem,” he said in a recent video while devouring a soft-shell crab sandwich from Ekiben.

White’s followers cheer him on in the comments and seem charmed by his wide-eyed enthusiasm. “It’s like watching a kid open their Christmas present,” one viewer wrote. But his content also hits home for those with firsthand experience of the carceral system. “After being locked up so long ... it’s the simple things everyone takes for granted in free world that bring tears,” wrote another.

It all started with a friend and a Big Mac.

White said his family life growing up in Harford County was chaotic. Both his parents used drugs, and he spent years bouncing between foster homes and relatives’ houses in Baltimore. Neighbor Bryanna Sanderson, who had both parents and was headed for nursing school, couldn’t have been more different. Yet she and White gravitated toward one another, and they stayed in touch even after he was sent to prison in 2008 for an armed carjacking and other offenses.

Not yet old enough to drive, White was placed in the Harford County Detention Center alongside adults. The food wasn’t just bad but barely edible, cooked in a filthy kitchen and frequently garnished with hair, White said.

“You’re looking at it and saying, ‘Man, what is this?’” White recalled. “But the reality is, if I don’t eat, I’m gonna starve to death.” Food could become a weapon — withheld by guards as punishment, he said. Yet meals could also be a source of creativity and community, with prisoners scraping together their commissary provisions to make a special meal. He learned to use an ID card to chop vegetables for “prison lasagna,” and to shred slices of white bread to make pizza dough.

Mostly, food became a symbol of the life and freedom he longed for. Sanderson remembers how White cut out drink recipes and magazine articles about new restaurants and sent them in the letters he wrote his friends. He was still a kid, dreaming of the big world beyond Harford County. He fantasized about the first meal he’d eat when he finally got out: a Big Mac, chicken nuggets, apple pie and milkshake.

When he finally made parole, he found yet another obstacle. “They say ‘We can’t release you to no felon.’ I don’t really have no family at the time,” said White, whose parents had died while he was incarcerated. “And then the family I do have, they felons.” Sanderson took a leap of faith and invited him to live with her and her two daughters.

The day after White got out, Sanderson drove him to McDonald’s and pulled out her phone, recording his first bite. “This shit is mind-blowing,” he said, shaking his head in disbelief. Sanderson giggled. Another friend set up a TikTok account for him, and White posted his reaction online. Sanderson urged him to use hashtags to expand his reach.

The video, which now has more than 17 million views, went viral. White had a new job: influencer.

Despite his success since, White carries many of the scars and habits that come with having spent half his life behind bars. Though he had a large guest room to stay in at Sanderson’s house, he curled up his 6’4 frame and slept on the closet floor at first. He prefers the house hot, like it always was in jail, and is now barred from touching the thermostat after Sanderson came home one night to find the house over 100 degrees. “He was like, ‘I’m cold,’” she said. “I’m like, ‘We can’t do this.’”

Sometimes, people from his old life reach out, trying to rope him into trouble. White has learned to stay out of it. “Sometimes he’ll just put his phone on DND [do not disturb],” Sanderson said.

“I’ve got too much to lose,” White said.

He’s had a hard time holding down a regular job, leaving a brief stint at a warehouse because it reminded him too much of being in jail. In contrast, his work as a foodie feels freeing. A company recently flew him out to Seattle to sample various dishes at the city’s famed Pike Place Market. “Now I get paid to travel the world and eat,” he said. “You can’t make this up.”

Sanderson acts as his publicist and camera person when she’s not busy at her day job as a nurse. She gets paid in leftovers since White, who seems like a voracious eater in videos, usually has just a few bites of any new food he tries. “I’ve gained like 35 or 40 pounds,” she laughed.

Last week, White, Sanderson and her daughter Arianna visited Poke Taco, a new eatery inside Canton’s Can Company that serves sushi tacos wrapped in crunchy seaweed.

White had never tried many of the items on the menu, including kimchi, crab rangoon and boba tea, just a few of the foods whose popularity took off stateside during the years he was in prison. He struggled to use chopsticks to take his first bite of kimchi, and seemed taken aback by the punchy flavor. After a few sips of his boba tea, he slurped some of the black tapioca pearls into his straw, startled when they reached his mouth.

“What’s the balls in there, just floating around?” he asked with a laugh. “Wow, that caught me by surprise.”

He hopes for many more.