Chefs wage war against ‘food porn’ in France

PARIS: The next time you try to take a picture of your dinner in a posh French restaurant, don’t be surprised if an angry chef comes storming out of the kitchen.

Fed up with patrons snapping photographs with their smartphones to post on social networks, several Michelinstarred French establishments are trying to crack down on socalled “food porn”.

Food bloggers, and even some chefs, defend the pictures as free publicity, but for many the sharing has just gone too far.

“There’s a time and a place for everything,” said Alexandre Gauthier, chef at La Grenouillere in the northern town of La Madelaine-sous-Montreuil.

“We are trying to give our clients a break in their lives. For that, you need to turn off your mobile,” he said.

Short of formally banning photographs in his restaurant, Gauthier has put an image of a camera with a strike-through on his menu.

“Before they used to take photos of their family, of their grandmother, but now it’s photos of dishes,” he said.

“It is gratifying, but we’re a restaurant without very much light, so they have to use a flash. And with each dish it’s ‘stop everything’, or the photo has to be retaken three times.

“It’s Tweeted, liked, comments are made and replied to – by then the dish is cold.”

Gilles Goujon, chef at the three-starred L’Auberge du Vieux Puits in the southern town of Fontjoncouse, said he was increasingly frustrated.

He said food pictures “take away the surprise” of some of his dishes and “take a bit of my intellectual property”.

Not all chefs are so unwelcoming to the craze for food photos. Said restaurant owner David Toutain: “You have to live with the times,” he said. “Social networks helped at the start of my career and are helping me now. It’s advertising.” – Sapa-AFP