Miguel Batista, a Dominican dad from Atlantic City, New Jersey, has built an online following by bringing his adult daughter her meals with a song and a dance. In an Oct. 27 video, he delivered a full breakfast of eggs, avocado, tostones and chicharrones while dressed as an Oompa Loompa, TODAY reported.
His daughter, Michelle, who is in her 30s, is the audience for the performances, and she told TODAY the videos come from a simple place: “Food is a love language, and he’s so funny naturally.” She also gave credit where it is due. Her mother, Ramona Batista, is the one who actually cooks the meals.
The Oompa Loompa Breakfast
The Oct. 27 clip is the latest in a run of musical meal deliveries, according to TODAY’s Oct. 30 profile of the family. In it, Batista, dressed as an Oompa Loompa, brings his daughter a plate of eggs, avocado, tostones and chicharrones, with music as part of the delivery.
The costume choice has a food connection of its own. The Oompa-Loompas are the workforce of Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory in Roald Dahl’s “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” where they are paid in cocoa beans. The 1971 film version gave them their best-known look: orange skin, green hair and white overalls. In the 2005 film, every Oompa-Loompa was played by Deep Roy, and in the 2023 prequel “Wonka,” Hugh Grant played an Oompa-Loompa named Lofty.
The videos are posted on Instagram rather than TikTok. TODAY credited the clips to the @el_tiomiguelito Instagram account, where the meal-delivery videos are posted. TODAY did not report view counts for the videos; the breakfast clip was posted Oct. 27, three days before the profile ran.
Part of the charm is how ordinary the food is. These are home meals, and the joke is that a grown daughter still gets breakfast delivered with full fanfare. Families who like setting up a weekend spread will recognize the appeal of a dedicated breakfast station, where the food is part of the event, and home cooks can lean on a few clever kitchen tricks to get a full plate out faster.
Mom Ramona Batista Does the Cooking
For all the attention on Miguel’s costumes and singing, Michelle made sure TODAY knew who stands at the stove. Ramona Batista prepares the meals; Miguel handles the delivery and the entertainment. Michelle pointed out that detail herself, TODAY reported, so the credit for the eggs, tostones and chicharrones in the Oct. 27 video belongs to Ramona.
That division of labor, with one parent cooking and the other carrying the plate with a flourish, is easy for families to recognize. It also reflects the way food ties families together across generations, a theme that runs through stories about the things grandparents do to make the holidays feel special.
The meal-as-message idea is not new. Adults who grew up being told to clean their plate know that family meals can carry more meaning than the menu suggests, and lists of boomer habits that are making a comeback show how younger families reach back for older routines.
The Dominican Breakfast on the Plate
The plate itself is a recognizable Dominican-style breakfast. Tostones are twice-fried slices of green, unripe plantain: the slices are fried, flattened with a tostonera or a similar flat object, then fried again until crisp and usually salted, according to background on the dish. The same food goes by patacones in Ecuador, Panama, Venezuela, Colombia, Costa Rica and Peru.
Plantains anchor the morning meal in the Dominican Republic. Mangú, made from boiled and mashed green plantains, is described as the country’s typical national breakfast, and when it is served with fried cheese, fried Dominican salami and fried eggs, topped with red onions cooked in vinegar and oil, the combination is known as los tres golpes, or “the three hits,” according to an overview of Dominican cuisine.
Chicharrón, fried pork, rounds out the plate in Batista’s video. Together with eggs and avocado, it makes the kind of full plate that turns a weekday breakfast into an occasion.
Why the Batista Family Videos Connect
Michelle’s line to TODAY sums up the appeal: food is a love language, and her father is funny without trying. The videos pair two simple things, a home-cooked plate and a parent willing to look a little silly for a child, even one who has long since grown up.
The Batistas are part of a large community. New Jersey had 328,092 residents of Dominican descent in the 2020 Census, second only to New York among states, according to figures on Dominican Americans. Paterson had the state’s largest Dominican community in that count, at 44,226 residents, and the national Dominican American population stood at 2,539,893 in 2024. Tostones, chicharrón and plantain dishes are well-known Dominican foods, and seeing them served with a song gives viewers a glimpse of everyday cooking in a Dominican-American home in Atlantic City.
The family’s routine, as TODAY described it, comes down to a few points:
- Who: Miguel Batista, a Dominican dad in Atlantic City, and his daughter Michelle, in her 30s.
- What: meals delivered with singing and dancing, including an Oct. 27 breakfast in an Oompa Loompa costume.
- The cook: Ramona Batista, Michelle’s mother, prepares the food.
- Where to watch: the @el_tiomiguelito account on Instagram.
For now, the routine continues on Instagram: Ramona cooks, Miguel sings and dances, and Michelle eats breakfast with a front-row seat.
This article was produced with AI assistance and edited for accuracy against the sources linked above.
Image: Jdvillalobos – CC BY-SA 3.0/Wikimedia Commons
