Plan B Forum

Two Michelin-starred French chefs are cracking down on customers who take photographs of their food, it's been reported.




Gilles Goujon, who runs the three-starred L'Auberge du vieux puits restaurant in Fontjoncouse in southern France, says it is poor etiquette to take photos of food, and more importantly, every time his creations appear on social networks it "takes away the surprise, and a little bit of my intellectual property", news website France TV Info reports.

Another chef, Alexandre Gauthier of the Grenouillere restaurant in the northern French town of La Madelaine-sous-Montreuil, has gone as far as to add a "no cameras" logo to his menu - although photography isn't strictly banned there.

Gauthier lamented the fact that customers now take pictures of the food rather than the people they are dining with. "Before, they were pictures of family, grandmother, and now we take pictures of food… We tweet, we like, we respond to comments, and the dish is cold."

But not all fine dining establishments take the same view - some have even been known to offer food photography courses.

I hope this doesn't spread, I love taking images of our fine dining, for my blog and other sites.

Just as long as people stop taking pictures of themselves and calling them "selfies", the cause of civilization will be advanced.

You know I don't have a problem with taking pictures of good looking food but too many people think Denny's needs to be emblazoned on their Facebook walls

Gilles Goujon, who runs the three-starred L'Auberge du vieux puits restaurant in Fontjoncouse in southern France, says it is poor etiquette to take photos of food, and more importantly, every time his creations appear on social networks it "takes away the surprise, and a little bit of my intellectual property",

Mr. Goujon has been in the kitchen too long; the heat appears to have caused him to lose all perspective....

The food is the "property" of the paying customer; and for what places like that charge the customer ought to be able to dance with their meal if they so choose...

This reminds me of the way Gareth Blackstock would go balistic on Chef! if a customer wanted to so much as put salt on "his" food...

What a pair of prima donnas; Those two need to be reminded of who it is that pays the freight and keeps the lights on at their restaurants...

Ikura! Fresh Ikura is wonderful. That crystalline burst of the taste of sea water as you crush one of them in your mouth is sublime. Brings back memories of body surfing at San Clemente or Huntington Beach.


yrs,
rubato

It seems a bit rich to make such a big thing of presentation of the food, then act up when people who have paid an arm for the actual cooking, and a leg for the presentation actually want to make a record of their experience.

Cooking and presenting food at a high level is art and the artist is entitled to control their own medium. Only an asshole would insist on taking flash pictures during a play and ruining the experience for everyone else and only an asshole would insist on taking pictures during a fine-dining meal and ruining the experience, as envisioned by the artist, for everyone else.



yrs,
rubato

rubato wrote:Cooking and presenting food at a high level is art and the artist is entitled to control their own medium. Only an asshole would insist on taking flash pictures during a play and ruining the experience for everyone else and only an asshole would insist on taking pictures during a fine-dining meal and ruining the experience, as envisioned by the artist, for everyone else.



yrs,
rubato

Well apart from the total inanity of your play analogy, you may like to know that all the fine dining images I have taken were done without flash, and with full consent of the chef and maître d.

He's on quite a roll today, isn't he?

It's as though he's cruising through the threads while thinking, " Hmm...Okay, where can I show what a complete imbecile I am next?"

If the dish in question is a unique creation then the intellectual property of the chef should be respected. Quite simple really...

Lord Jim wrote:He's on quite a roll today, isn't he?

It's as though he's cruising through the threads while thinking, " Hmm...Okay, where can I show what a complete imbecile I am next?"

Jim, Jim, Jim, get it straight...rube is not an imbicile. He is an ignoranus!

Sean wrote:If the dish in question is a unique creation then the intellectual property of the chef should be respected. Quite simple really...

Sean, if I buy a painting from an artist, it's mine to do with as I see fit....

Take photos of it, spray paint it if I want to...

On top of that, presumably these dishes on are on a menu, so hardly "unique"...

If these dishes were not being served in a restaurant for people to eat and people were there to only view the dishes, I would agree with the intellectual property idea.

But the idea that people shouldn't be allowed to photograph food they are about to eat is....

hard to swallow.

Sean wrote:If the dish in question is a unique creation then the intellectual property of the chef should be respected. Quite simple really...

I agree to an extent, and if there was a notice, or a request not to photograph the dish, then I'd comply. But the place would go down in my estimation of it. An aide-mémoire of the dish, the night, the experience, is all we can take away with us.

Ps. was SMF standing over you with a bread knife in her hand when you worte that?

What I see at work here is a combination of three things that one frequently sees operating in combination; ego, paranoia, and insecurity....

I understand that many top chefs, like many other accomplished artists, are tempremental egomaniacs; it frequently comes with the territory. And this condition is nurtured by the fact that they, (again like many other successful artists) dine on a steady diet of subservience and flattery....

What people like that need more than anything else, (whether they realize it or not) is somebody in their life who can tell them when they are behaving like a horse's ass....

And any chef who's such a control freak that they have come to believe they have some sort of right to prevent paying customers from taking a picture of their own meals, is behaving like a horse's ass, and somebody should tell them so.

As someone who has had his intellectual copyright thieved before (Robbie Williams is a cunt btw!) I can see where these chefs are coming from. I can see where Jim is coming from with the painting analogy but it doesn't hold water as a painting is a one off. I can also see where Rube is coming from but again, the analogy is not quite watertight as flash photography would disturb the creation of a theatrical performance. A rock concert might be a better analogy...

Michelin stars are not handed out just for what's on the plate but for the total experience. Cooking and running a restaurant at the highest level is high art and it is ephemeral like dance, music, theatre (although with theatre you can have a text). Any artist is entitled to the control of their medium. If you don't like it then go somewhere with a different artist.

In my experience, and I think this is borne out by S.Sci research, if you are photographing you have reduced your experience of the present moment. This is inevitable. Taking a picture uses part of your brain which reduces the formation of present memories. And besides, photographs are 2 dimensional illusions of reality and weak ones at that. There has never been a photograph which has captured what even it looks like to be at the Grand Canyon, Monument Valley, Yosemite let alone relaying everything from all of the other senses.

So the chef is fully justified. If he/she has worked hard to provide a great experience, lighting, movement, sound, color, to set off a great meal then they have a right to say "look if you want THIS experience then you have to BE HERE in this present moment. It is a matter of simple respect.


yrs,
rubato

Rube is rising to defend arrogant, horse's ass behavior...

Well now there's a surprise...

"Since we cannot attain unto it, let us revenge ourselves with railing against it."

Michel de Montaigne

"He wrapped himself in quotations as a beggar would enfold himself in the purple of Emperors."

- Rudyard Kipling