Banning the pizzarazzi

Over in the US, some restaurants are putting a stop to taking snaps of your dinner - and Ayesha Muttucumaru is not best pleased

 
At GTG HQ, I have a bit of a bad reputation when it comes to food. To put it bluntly, I have no self-control. My rather embarrassing eating habits consist of having dessert after breakfast, opting for pastry instead of fruit for my 11 o’clock “snack” and shunning my healthy packed-lunch in favour of a double cheeseburger (it’s because of the cold weather, I swear).

It is this inability to say “No” to anything deep-fried or sugar-coated that has even caused my usually complimentary colleagues to wonder whether I am in fact, “with child” (I’m not mum and dad, just in case you’re reading this). I clearly appreciate my food and sometimes yes, I would like to take a picture of my most recent food conquest. Having a “before” picture makes the achievement of demolishing it all the more satisfying.
 
So I was therefore less than pleased to read in The New York Times that some restaurants in the US were looking to ban customers from taking pictures of their food. Manhattan-based chef and restaurateur David Bouley only permits photos to be taken within the confines of the kitchen, as table photography “totally disrupts the ambience”. Now, I would completely understand this if you had a whole production crew crammed around your tiny table for two, but I for one don’t recall this ever being an issue. And call me a fuss-pot, but on occasion I do like my friends to be in the photo too.
 
Fellow foodies Jessica Alba and Nicole Scherzinger have also been known to post pics of their restaurant-based exploits on Twitter. You would think that such far-reaching (and more importantly, free) advertising would be welcome. However, it looks like they (like me) are going to have to settle for just eating their food rather than snapping it too. Sad times for food-voyeurs everywhere.