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Food Bloggers Giving Restaurant Owners Heartburn
crimeandpunishment writes "Call it the invasion of the pasta paparazzi. Food bloggers are so excited about sharing their experiences, especially at trendy, popular restaurants, that they're too busy taking pictures and video to enjoy the food when it's at its best. Many signature dishes come out at the perfect temperature ... take a few minutes to capture what it looks like, and your palate won't be nearly as pleased. Some restaurants have taken the step of banning cameras, or at least have established a 'no flash' rule. Others just want to make sure enthusiastic reviewers are still enthused after eating their food."
People fail to realize that the point of food is to enjoy the taste. It doesn't matter how it looks, as long as it tastes good.
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This story looks magnificent, I love the arrangement of the words and the punctuation! Hang on while I read it... ... meh...
True. This is a load of gibberish. When you have a table of 4, with 4 different entrees, do you really think the chef/cook/etc got it perfectly right so as to have all 4 entrees (and sides) done at the perfect temperature simultaneously? Really?
No, three of them sat under a heat lamp for a minute, two, or five, while the last entree (and accompaniments) were getting finished.
Writer has never worked in a restaurant kitchen.
Perhaps the real problem is that all the flash lights disturb the other guests in the restaurant.
Take the diner who recently ordered a signature dish, Hot Potato-Cold Potato, in which a marble-sized sphere of piping hot Yukon Gold is dropped into a bowl of 40-degree potato soup at the pull of a pin. Eating it at the proper temperature is key to the experience.
Desserts with something fresh out of the oven and ice cream on top are similar- wait even 5 minutes and the melting ice cream hurts the taste and texture noticeably. Now, if they were talking about typical dishes without built-in temperature differences, I might agree with you.
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...a few minutes? What is this, the 1840's?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_photography
--an unbreakable toy is useful for breaking other toys--
Even if they did, they are expected to hold their taste long enough for them to be, you know, eaten?
Which, if you do it right, can take some time. Divide into bite-sized portions, not too big, convey to mouth, chew *thoroughly*, then and only then swallow. Then take a sip of your drink, probably engage in conversation for a minute, before repeating.
If taking a minute at the beginning of the meal to take pictures degrades the taste, then the taste will be degraded horribly by the time the diner finishes the plate. And people who take a moment to close their eyes and thank $deity for their food would be ruining it too. It's a bunch of nonsense.
Flash photography can be distracting and annoying, however.
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Many signature dishes come out at the perfect temperature
No they don't. Get over yourselves.
You sir, obviously haven't experienced the finer art of cooking. Last week I made a lasagna that needed to be served at the perfect temperature in order to be optimally satisfying. It needed to be so hot that it would scorch the taste buds right off of your tongue, or else you would be unable to stand the taste.
DE-LI-CIOUS! Hmmm. Nothing beats homemade cooking.
I don't know about anyone else, but when I have to wait at a restaurant to get seated and then wait for food, the only thing on my mind when that food appears is eating it. Sure I'll talk about how good it tastes and how great it looks, but that's gonna happen while eating it. I'm not going to go "Sweet! That's EXACTLY what I wanted and I'm starving, oh it smells so good I'm just going to whip out my iPhone and start blogging about it." No, I'm hungry gosh darn it, GET IN MY BELLY!
-=JML=-
I always though geeks were into cooking? First impressions matter. The first bite cements a flavor memory, that sticks with you as your food cools. Miss the window of opportunity and a great dish just becomes good or even meh. This is also why good food is generally served in small portions. Its like your first sip of coffee in the morning, if you waited tell it was cold or left it in the pot to burn you might just spit it out. But if you had a few drinks before waiting tell its past its prime you might just finish off that last gulp or two without any problem. Same thing.
In fairness, the article cited a particular dish, called "Hot Potato-Cold Potato," for which the temperature was critical.
However, I can't imagine this being an issue at any restaurant that I've ever eaten. The perfect temperature? Customers taking twenty photos of their meal? Who are these people, and what is wrong with them?
People are weird as hell.
No exceptions.
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And the incessant whining from RMS about restaurants that don't publish their recipes.
RTFA. Setting up and using a tripod takes more than a minute. The problem isn't just clicking a button on a cell camera - the problem is setting up equipment to get the "perfect shot" of the food at the expense of actually enjoying it.
That explains why all those gourmet meals have such small portions! You have to eat it quickly.
Snobs who eat things like the above mentioned dish and call it "an experience" are assholes and the world would probably be a better place if they didn't have a blog.
Obviously. First, a good restaurant chef will time things so that they get done as close to each other as possible. Second, some of the dishes will come off of the stove or out of the oven a bit hotter than the perfect temperature and need a minute or two to cool down; generally, those are plated first, so that by the time everything else is done, they're Just Right.
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Maybe I'm just old-fashioned, but whipping out your camera at a nice restaurant seems decidedly tacky. Flashes could also disturb fellow diners.
Anyone setting up a tripod gets what they deserve, although I don't see why it causes the food to be colder. It's not like you can't have the tripod ready to go before the food shows up. (And tripods are really what's slowing people down, then banning flashes is the opposite of what you want to do. Ban the tripods instead, they're probably a menace to navigation between tables anyway.)
Frankly the whole article smells of creating journalism out of a weak, rare concern. I've never noticed anyone else taking pictures of their food in a restaurant, which suggests that few people are really doing it, or that most of them are quick and discrete.
Parent is modded funny (and I think that was discord5's intention), but some people like myself have a low threshold of heat pain. I've taken crotch shots, broken bones, and blinding headaches, and come away mostly none the worse for wear. Anything above 115 deg F, however, is too hot for me to touch, let alone eat, and I reflexively recoil from it. "Fresh off the grill" is best served on room-temperature bread, with recently refrigerated condiments. And as much as I like Mexican food (well, most any food, ethnic or otherwise), the typical Mexican restaurant chicken fajita has to sit at least 5 minutes before I can even consider taking a bite.
WRT TFA, that's plenty of time to set up a camera and tripod. I'm not going to complain, if I eat food that is at a temperature the cook/chef isn't hot enough. I know my taste buds, and general tastes, better than the cook does.
If taking a minute at the beginning of the meal to take pictures degrades the taste, then the taste will be degraded horribly by the time the diner finishes the plate.
The thing is, in restaurants expensive enough to be visited by people who review food, you barely get more than a few bites worth of food on your plate to start with.
Many signature dishes come out at the perfect temperature
No they don't. Get over yourselves.
It's the whole idea behind the McDLT.
You're not supposed to do any cooking when you have open sores.
The obvious solution is to have blogging and non-blogging sections of the restaurant, and adjust the food temperatures accordingly. I'd much rather my food come out too warm and need to cool a little that "perfect": eating at a fine restaurant is generally done with company, and talking is often the real main course. "Shut up, and eat it before it gets cold" is what I'd expect from my mother, not a fine restaurant.
Food bloggers are simply braggarts. "Look at me and the wonderful food I'm enjoying! Aren't I just precious?" This is the sub-text of almost every food blog. It's even more obnoxious than disturbing the fellow diners.
If you're going to go clandestine go and eat and take copious notes. Then setup a photo shoot with the restaurant of what you had. You will have the time to set up your photographic equipment correctly and take good photos not some spur of the moment flash crap that makes the stuff look like roast corpse.
If you're not going to go clandestine set up a private room and explain who you are and why you're coming. Most TV stations do this. Most of the reviews I've seen the most effort expended on are the positive ones. And by chance the positive ones are the ones I want to read. I want a score for the bad ones so I can avoid them.
I would not take a camera to a little Mexican hole in the wall I know as the patrons might complain but I fully plan on taking pictures of the food and the new add on they're making when they scrape up enough money to complete it. I'm sure the owner will allow a private photo shoot. The owner is at least a 3 star chef, the food is not cheap and the way he makes it is better than any so called Mexican restaurant within 50 miles. There are a few true Mexican restaurants in town but not even those compare to this gem.
I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty
Slightly offtopic, but I use the Urban Spoon app a lot. In general I don't trust any individual food bloggers. It's impossible to know which twits ordered something they probably wouldn't like but wanted to try, and then blogged about how they didn't like it. Or the waitress didn't respond to their "Are you from Tennessee?" pickup line and they feel slighted. Or they just like to bitch. Or they just don't like the race of the proprietor.
So I've begun to trust the raw number. 87% of people liked it out of 150 reviews? I'm in.
Found an awesome vietnamese place the other day that way, minutes from my home. I've been ordering Bun Bo Hue for a couple of decades, and this lady was the first person to good-naturedly) correct me. It's pronounced "huay", not "hew". They were all laughing at me, I just know it.
Same hear, I call this the "not killing your mouth and taste buds with scalding hot coffee day in and out efect"
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Which Helpless Linux zealot/MS basher do you want to mod down today?
Look, if you think $12 a plate (e.g. Applebees) is high end, you're not going to the kind of restaurant where timing is critical (although applebees does still make an attempt to come out at the same time...). Not coincidentally, you're also not going to the kind of restaurant where people would consider taking a picture of the food.
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But is it really that bad? Maybe it just hasn't caught on in little Brisbane, Australia and I'm missing the point as to why it's front page worthy on /.
If I was witty I'd put something funny here but, as it stands, I am not and have just wasted seconds of your life
ZOMG! Heisenberg uncertainty principle for food!
You work at my local Domino's Pizza too, right?
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
I'm similar, but the pain threshold takes time to 'set'
I can burn myself and not even realize it, while at the same time I can hold a cup of coffee in my hand and go "OUCH OUCH OUCH OUCH HOT"
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
Seriously, you don't know shit about cooking meat if you're not resting it.
You better watch out, there may be dogs about . .
Crispy things with a sauce on top often get soggy after a while. The more time you spend not eating it, the more likely that it will be soggy by the time you finally get around to it.
Here was I thinking it was because they fear nobody's going to go to a restaurant serving a tiny portion size. The more the cook fancies himself as a great chef, the less you'll get on your plate.
Oh, just go fuck off already.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
Are they using polaroid cameras?
Serious Foods: RE: Resting a Steak
Presented to you is actual photographic evidence for the reason for "resting a steak".
Now, to point, if you rest a steak and the person gets it cold, then they fucked up. Using the argument of "resting a steak" is not a proper reason for a cold steak.
Rather the myth should be that resting a steak means letting it go cold. This later one would be the mark of a bad chef.
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Not coincidentally, you're also not going to the kind of restaurant where people would consider taking a picture of the food.
Oh really? There are plenty of places on this wild world web that revel in taking photos of bad food from shitty restaurants or discussing bad food photography.
... and then they built the supercollider.
Don't go hating on Applebee's, they're an amazing resource. If anyone says you're a bad cook, take them out to Applebee's and they'll never think poorly of your cooking again.
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To be fair, if a dish is taste, texture, smell, sight... what word other than "experience" sums that up nicely? I understand using "experience" the same way tourism commercials do would be snobbish and silly, but used properly I'm afraid there's no good substitute when talking about food.
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Parent is modded funny (and I think that was discord5's intention), but some people like myself have a low threshold of heat pain. I've taken crotch shots, broken bones, and blinding headaches, and come away mostly none the worse for wear.
Are you sure you're following instructions properly when cooking?
It is what it is.
Donut.
Quack, quack.
You want me to waste $12 on someone who thinks I'm a bad cook?
In all fairness, Hell is not weird. It's kind of nice once you get used to the heat. Plus the chicks are incredible!
-dZ.
Carol vs. Ghost
Perhaps the real problem is that all the flash lights disturb the other guests in the restaurant.
Yes, but perhaps the REAL problem is that restaurants don't like customers sharing (often unflattering) reviews of their establishment on the web. Especially sites like Yelp. Curtailing cameras may be seen as a way to discourage the more hardcore restaurant bloggers.
I always though geeks were into cooking?
Obviously, sir, you watch too much television, of the variety "geek becomes highly desirable - once the girl gets to know the guy".
Ok maybe so, but what is snobbish about a souffle? They're amazing right out of the oven but turn into a rubbery omelet ten minutes later. They aren't complicated to make; I taught my elementary school kids to make them. The reason many people have never had them is because timing is critical. You can't keep them under a heat lamp.
Or take pizza. Most of us are accustomed to eating lukewarm pizza, but it really is much better right out of the oven.
Ever eat gravy on a slice of roast beef? Isn't hot gravy much better than room temperature gravy? Gravy, by the way, is a sauce, and many sauces, particularly the fat based ones, go from wonderful at serving temperature to nasty at room temperature.
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Hi there. I know you're probably a troll, but I'm going to respond to you as if you were serious.
Please note I am a professionally trained chef.
The practice of "resting" meat is important. If you cut into a steak that's hot off the grill, you will see a whole bunch of liquid run out and make a pool on your plate. Think of this as a pool of flavor that you just drained out of your steak. If you give it a few minutes to cool down a little and let the fat congeal, it won't go running out, and you will experience all the intended fatty goodness in every bite.
P.S. If your steak is actually *cold*, then yes somebody is doing something wrong.
Knowledge != Intelligence
Presented to you is actual photographic evidence for the reason for "resting a steak".
What's in there might be actual photographic evidence that people have different tastes. That would only seem to apply to meat that simply isn't cooked enough. I *hate* medium-rare steaks. Medium-well is the minimum cooking a steak would need, but I'd prefer mine well-done.
Yeah, yeah. A whole lot of people are going to start replying on how I'm killing the taste of the meat. I don't like that raw taste you seem to like, and I want to kill it. Resting a stake seems to increase that flavor, based on your evidence.
Not everyone agrees with your tastes. Get over it.
I would never argue that you are killing the taste of the steak. If you like your meat well-done, then by Thor, you want it well-done!
Taste is opinion. Period.
But the person I responded to replied that there is no reason to rest a steak, to which I provided evidence that there is a proper scientifically verifiable reason to resting a steak.*
I also pointed out though, that if a steak is cold when you get it; it should never be because it was rested. If one is leaving a steak out until it is cold, then this is not "resting"... this is simply being a bad chef.
To wit, if you're in a restaurant, feel free to order a steak well-done with no resting. Most chefs already understand the idea of cooking to order.
* Unlike searing a steak to "seal in the juices". It's been scientifically proven that searing a steak actually decreases the moisture content at the end.
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I don't think there's anything wrong with taking a picture of your meal. ONE! Right when they lay it down in front of you, snap the pic with your phone and dig in.
On countless occasions, I've seen pictures of a dish that made me want to try that dish, when the description alone didn't do it for me. How often have you been sitting in a restaurant, not knowing what to order, when another patron's meal arrives and you say "I want what he's having" ? Well a picture on a blog is the same thing, except I don't have to be in that restaurant to see it. More importantly, if it looks tasty, I am far more likely to want to go there, than were I just randomly walking around with a growling stomach.
In a similar vein, pictures help introduce people to foods they don't know. Show me a picture of something I've never eaten, and I can make a preliminary decision of whether I'd want to put that in my mouth. Show me just some long-ass vowel-anemic name and a terse description, and I'll trot my ignorant ass down to the pub across the street, where I know what I'm ordering. Or worse, I'll blindly order the strange thing, not like it, and tell everyone how disgusting it was.
The only chefs who should be worried about pictures, are the ones serving nasty food. Frankly, they deserve to fail, and anything that expedites the process is fine by me.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
You and I clearly do not dine at the same caliber of restaurants...
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Applebee's isn't bad food. They're just not fine dining, and one of the less expensive kinda-boring chain restaurants. The only thing I can say they do really wrong is ribs, which for some reason, they cut across the bone to give you lots of sharp bony bits to bite into.
It's just that their fare is just that: ribs, hamburgers, poor cuts of meat they've cooked the hell out of for safety, fajitas, etc. Easy, cheap food. I'll take them over McDonald's if, say, I'm traveling and there's no other choice in the sleepy truck-stop town I have to pause in to avoid falling asleep on the road.
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