Let’s face it: people are posting too many pictures of their food to social media sites, especially Instagram. I know, I know. I don’t have to look at the pictures, and no one is suggested imposing a legal ban on food pictures (so keep your First Amendment rants to yourself, thank you much). It’s just an irritating trend. In fact, pictures of food topped BuzzFeed’s list of “11 Things No One Wants to See You Instagram.”
That said, I will freely admit that I post pictures of food on occasion. On. Occasion.
The world needs to know that these exist. I regret nothing.
I am not a prolific poster on Instagram. I may post to Facebook every five minutes, according to some who probably wish they had my type of ADHD, but I try to limit photos to things that are interesting, unique, or for which I have an awesome caption. I do post pictures of food from time to time. Just this week, I posted a picture of the beignet pancakes I had at Kerbey Lane, because how often does anyone get to eat beignet pancakes? How awesome is the very concept of beignet pancakes??? Beignet freaking pancakes!!!!!!!
(I also reserve the right to post pictures of ridiculously overblown chili cheeseburgers and absurdly large cinnamon rolls. The common thread is a unique mix of superlative qualities and hyperbole.)
Apparently, some people have taken amateur food photography to a whole new level, according to the New York Times:
There are the foreign tourists who, despite their big cameras, tend to be very discreet. There are those who use a flash and annoy everyone around them. There are those who come equipped with gorillapods — those small, flexible tripods to use on their tables.
There are even those who stand on their chairs to shoot their plates from above.
People, get over yourselves. I mean, I know this is all taking place in Manhattan, the home of pretension those of us in the provinces can scarcely imagine, but really, gorillapods?
The solutions some of these restaurants have found, however, might be even more annoying than the food photography:
Rather than tell people they can’t shoot their food — the food they are so proud to eat that they need to share it immediately with everyone they know — [chef David Bouley] simply takes them back into his kitchen to shoot as the plates come out. “We’ll say, ‘That shot will look so much better on the marble table in our kitchen,’ ” Mr. Bouley said.
That’s not going to slow down service at all, I’m sure. Rather than have annoying photographers at every few tables (I’m assuming not everybody in Manhattan posts food photos to Instagram), the restaurant will have a line of street corner Ansel Adamses parading around where they prepare everyone else’s food.
Other restaurants have gone the other way, banning photography entirely within the restaurant. The New York Times relates the story of a diner who got a smackdown at Momofuku Ko for taking a picture of her food:
[Chef David] Chang is one of several chefs who either prohibit food photography (at Ko in New York) or have a policy against flashes (at Seiobo in Sydney, Australia, and Shoto in Toronto). High-end places like Per Se, Le Bernardin and Fat Duck discourage flash photography as well, though on a recent trip to the Thomas Keller restaurant Per Se, flashes were going off left and right, bouncing off the expansive windows overlooking Columbus Circle.
I’m trying to imagine a restaurant that looks like a red carpet area, with paparazzi flashes going off all around. The last time I was in a restaurant in New York City, my cell phone had a monochrome screen and the provider still charged for long distance. The word “smartphone” didn’t even exist.
Obviously, I have no idea what sort of illuminated hellscape New York City restaurants have become, but it seems to me that you do not need to ban flash photography unless you have an actual Picasso hanging in your dining room. There is no reason to think that this will put an end to food pictures. People find a way. The only way, I suspect, to put an end to obnoxious food photography is to stop rewarding it. Stop “liking” that picture someone posts of the meatloaf they just bought at Luby’s. Enforce some dang quality control. I may never get a chance to eat another beignet pancake, so I regret nothing, but the day I post a picture of the taco that I get at least once a month from Torchy’s, just to let the world know that I bought a taco, is the day I hang up my social media skates.
