Overview
Have you ever found yourself in a charming, low-lit restaurant on a Saturday night only to have the ambience destroyed by violent flashes from the table next to you? Perhaps it's happened right in front of you — a date who just had to halt conversation to whip out his iPhone and 'gram both your meals before you could deign to touch it. It's just as bad on the other end too. There's no way his followers at home want to see some poorly framed gourmet blob as they sit down to their own mildly depressing mac and cheese for one.
Well, now we have an excuse to send all these terrible snappers on a nice long trip away. In a world first, new London pop-up restaurant Picture House will be letting diners pay for their bill via photos of their food on Instagram. Like a sanctuary for the universally hated, notorious amateur food photographers can snap to their heart's content at this cursed hellhole and get a free two-course meal at the end of it.
Unfortunately for patrons and their respective Instagram followers, Picture House is in fact a marketing stunt by frozen food giants, Bird's Eye. Accordingly, the food that will be flooding everyone's newsfeeds will consist of fancy fish fingers and a beige assortment of things that once resembled chickens. Dimly Lit Meals for One should expect a huge influx of submissions in the next week.
All in all, the industry is pretty divided on the issue of novice foodie photographers. A restaurant in Cape Town has recently allowed patrons to use the newly-developed #dinnercam in their dining room — a futuristic casing for your meal (pictured above) that creates perfect lighting conditions allowing optimum food wankery. But other establishments like David Chang's Momofuku Ko are outright banning the practice. Still, according to an incredibly impartial survey taken by Bird's Eye, nine percent of Britons can't even go a single day without photographing their meals.
Of course, I'm being a little rough. The odd food pic is okay. Of course it is. All I ask is that the food on display should be truly extraordinary. A croque-en-bouche three metres tall? 'Gram that baby. Pasta which the chef has painstakingly arranged into a portrait of your face? That's DP material. But a plate of frocked up chicken dippers with the obligatory hashtag #BirdsEyeInspirations? No thanks.