Put Down The Camera Phone: Restaurants Start Banning “Foodstagramming”

Your steak arrives at the table, complete with thick cut chips and salad and a little bowl of tomato ketchup (it’s the little things)…

Are you the kind of person that takes out their camera phone within seconds to take a quick snap of your evening meal?

Some restaurants in New York City have started banning customers from taking photos of their food, in a move that could influence eateries worldwide.

If other restaurants follow suit, it could signal the demise of “foodstagramming” across the globe.

“Foodstagramming” for all the non-Instagram obsessives is a popular trend that involves taking Instagram photos of your meal, adding an attractive filter and sharing them online.

Slice of pizza? Instagram it!

Policies around food photography vary from restaurant to restaurant in the States, rules range from restrictions on using flash to outright bans.

“Some people are arrogant about it. They don’t understand why. But we explain that it’s one big table and we want the people around you to enjoy their meal,” Moe Issa, owener of Chef’s Table at Brooklyn Fare, told the New York Times.

“They pay a lot of money for this meal. It became even a distraction for the chef.”

While not everyone who photographs their food uses Instagram, the photo-sharing service now has 90 million monthly active users, and foodstagramming has become a worldwide fad.