How dare chefs make such a meal out of people photographing their food

"Oh what is it now, chefs?" I sneer to myself – not out loud because chefs are famously handy; I'm thinking of Gordon Ramsay, or John Cleese in that sketch where he bursts out of the kitchen waving a cleaver. "You moaning chefs get my goat, which left to you would presumably be locally sourced, turned into a jus or a foam and piped all over a perfectly harmless starter! Why don't you shut up, you bloody chefs?"You may be uncertain what I'm talking about. What are all these occasions when chefs say, want or bemoan something, you may wonder. Maybe my chef-irritability is making me delusional – but to my mind it's constant. Some chef is always saying something, and it's never just "Can you make sure that doesn't boil over – I'm popping out for a fag."It's probably the fault of the media – most things are. When you've retyped all the news agency stuff about Syria and Ukraine, and reprinted today's cameraphone snap of a goose swimming past someone's upstairs window, what are you going to put on page 2? Probably best just to ring up some chefs and find out what's bugging them.My view of chefs as a vocal part of the community is reinforced by the fact that most television programmes are now about cookery – about 52% according to a survey I just conducted into what would bolster my argument. I quite like cookery programmes – something I have in common with every other viewer. That's why there are so many. The future of television, according to haircuts and focus groups, is stuff that everyone quite likes, rather than stuff that anyone particularly likes. It's best just to make cookery programmes, because dramas are expensive, nature documentaries are fake and those horrible panel shows are brash and rude and have more chefs on them than women. But no one ever got annoyed by shots of a casserole.So, I already had more metaphorically folded arms than a metaphorical millipede exchanging insurance details with some chefs who'd just crashed into his car, when I heard the latest from the chefs: they're annoyed by shots of a casserole. Or probably not actually a casserole – that sounds a bit 70s – more likely a reduction or a daube or a posset or a phucking pho. They're cross that customers often photograph (or pho-tograph) their food and put those images online.These particular chefs are French, which, I must admit, doesn't allay my suspicions that they may not have quite got over themselves. So I'd completely prejudged Alexandre Gauthier (of La Grenouillère in La Madelaine-sous-Montreuil) before I heard what he had to say – which, as it turns out, was an efficient use of time."They used to come and take pictures of themselves and their family, their grandmother, whoever, as a souvenir," he said of his customers. "Now they take pictures of the food, they put it on Facebook or Twitter, they comment. And then the food is cold… I would like people to be living in the present. Tweet about the meal beforehand, tweet about it afterwards, but in between stop and eat." To this end, he's printed pictures of cameras with lines through them on all the menus.You may think he's got a point. People's urge to photograph every aspect of their lives is pretty wearing – I wish they wouldn't do it too. But my sympathy for him melts like sorbet under a flashbulb when he progresses from wishing they wouldn't to trying to stop them. They've bought the food: if they want to take a picture of it, that's their choice. Just as it's his choice to be irritated rather than flattered.The implication that these plates of grub should be treated with reverence makes me bridle. And it's even worse because they already are being treated with reverence but he's objecting to the nature of that reverence. It's too disrespectful a form of respect: he doesn't want people cooing and snapping with joy as if his masterpieces were merely a birthday knickerbocker-glory with sparklers in it – he wants the murmured acclamation of an art gallery.Nevertheless Gauthier claims that he's "not banned photographs at all" (which doesn't make much sense as I don't see what else could be inferred from the signs on the menus). And neither has his fellow complainant, Gilles Goujon (inventor of the goujon?) of the Auberge du Vieux Puits – but that's only because he hasn't "yet found the right words that won't be too shocking". He hates his food to be photographed because "it takes away the surprise", "it takes away a little bit of my intellectual property" and "a photo taken on an average smartphone… doesn't give the best impression of our work".I understand his feelings, but basically he needs to suck it up. If his customers have trawled strangers' Facebook pages and Twitter accounts for inexpertly-photographed gourmet meal spoilers, they only have themselves to blame if their expensive dinner's appearance fails to exhilarate. And Goujon's still got whatever the food tastes like to wow them with – you can't put that on Tumblr (at time of writing). As far as the intellectual property is concerned, I feel his pain, but he should take comfort from the fact that whoever first arranged a fry-up into the shape of a smiley face almost certainly never earned a penny from it.But what irritates me most about these chefs is that they're being so clever. They may come across as precious, but it won't make anyone think less of their cooking. On the contrary, by heavily implying that their food is beset by the greedy lenses of photographers – that it looks so good it gets papped and is forced to shun the limelight like Garbo – its deliciousness is taken as read. This is a problem, we all assume, only suffered by the best restaurants, the big chefs. At a Little Chef, it's not an issue – largely because they already provide photographs of the meals on the menus.(theguardian.com)ANN.Az