Mississippi Coast TikTok star’s next step is opening a restaurant in Gulfport

Matthew Bounds doesn’t consider himself a chef.

The creator behind the TikTok account “Your Barefoot Neighbor,” where he shares home-cooked recipes with more than 2 million followers, rejected the label Monday morning in Gulfport, standing inside a partially gutted space that once housed Downtown Bistro and will soon become his first restaurant, Neighbors Table & Tap.

The restaurant, a project he and his husband, CJ, have been working on since November of last year, is slated to open in March in what Bounds described as a “moody and cozy” addition to a waterfront corridor already lined with eateries.

While the full menu is still being developed, Bounds said it will serve lunch and small plates, including some entrees offered as dinner specials, along with cocktails and wine. It will also remain open late on Fridays and Saturdays, with a separate late-night menu.

He characterized the offerings as “fun” and “creative,” avoiding the “typical seafood” options common at many restaurants along the Mississippi Gulf Coast.

“Not everybody who walks in the door is going to know who I am, so I want this restaurant to stand on its own two feet and have its own identity,” Bounds said. “While we may sprinkle in a few of my viral recipes that everybody knows, the menu is not going to be built around me exclusively.”

Neighbors Table & Tap arrives as the Gulf Coast’s dining scene has expanded in recent decades, with avant-garde restaurants reshaping the culinary map — some even earning Michelin recognition in 2025. The region has increasingly positioned itself as a food destination beyond neighboring New Orleans, long a culinary powerhouse, drawing both newcomers and visitors from across the country.

Bounds has contributed to that evolution, carrying his online presence into the real world with a brick-and-mortar restaurant and cookbooks that made him a New York Times-bestselling author.

Bounds said the space, featuring long high-top tables, sofas and armchairs surrounded by an emerald-green interior, is designed to encourage conversation and lingering

“I want this to really be a landing place for people,” he said. “I want this to be a place where people want to be and want to hang out.”

Bounds will focus on its hospitality, a longtime passion that has always kept him “at the front of the house,” while another chef oversees the kitchen.

Though he did not learn how to cook until later in life, Bounds long dreamed of opening a restaurant. His introduction to the industry came as a teenager, washing dishes in a kitchen.

During the COVID pandemic, while working from home, he began teaching himself how to cook and started posting videos on TikTok as “Your Barefoot Neighbor” — a caricature of a shoeless neighbor who always greets you with a beer in hand.

What began as a page documenting do-it-yourself projects — from planting flower beds to building a fence — gradually shifted into a series of kitchen videos showing what he was making for dinner.

His audience, and his reach, grew quickly.

“You get a taste for it,” Bounds said, “And you either love it or you hate it. I loved it.”