A Twin Cities foodie’s two-decade journey to ‘kind of famous’

Through hard work and persistence, Hansen willed her personal brand into existence, media platform by media platform. “I was always looking for, ‘Is this the thing that’s gonna catapult me into where my peers are in this space?’ ”

Admittedly, sometimes it stung to be outside the inner circle, like when only March would receive a coveted restaurant-preview invite, due to her magazine role. (“We actually had a fight once where I screamed, ‘I’m tired of being the Jan to your Marcia,’ ” Hansen said, making a “Brady Bunch” reference.)

March says she’s impressed by Hansen’s ability to learn and grow and make things happen. And the way she invites her audience to try new things and be OK with messing up. “Food was her language, and she just had to figure out a way to use it that fit her personality and her authenticity,” March said.

In decades past, being a Minnesota food personality seemed to require a New York City pedigree — TV star Andrew Zimmern cooked under chef Thomas Keller, radio doyenne Lynne Rossetto Kasper taught at Le Cordon Bleu. Then social media swung the pendulum and a content creator could rocket to fame with a random, two-second noodle slurp.

The next evolution of food media may see celebrities taking over, Hansen says, citing new cooking shows from singer Selena Gomez and royal Meghan Markle, whose approach to hosting includes decanting snacks. “It’s like, geez, are you really gonna get a million followers because you just put a bag of pretzels in a different bag of pretzels,” Hansen mused, noting that, in the cutthroat attention economy, others are surely questioning if she’s worthy of so many eyeballs. “It’s ironic that I have those thoughts, because that’s what someone’s thinking about me,” she said.

Now that “Taste Buds” is syndicated to half of the U.S. television markets, boosting Hansen from, say, an N-list celebrity to an H-lister, fame hasn’t markedly changed her. (She still isn’t above wearing a dress she bought at Kowalski’s.)