The War On Food Blogs: When Chefs Attack

Seriously? Pink light? Just to ruin my photos?

Much like Fox News at Christmas, food bloggers can manufacture their own persecution stories.  Even the New York Times has reported about restaurants that discourage people from photographing their meals.

Of course, everyone should discourage photographing their meal.  It's horribly embarrassing and ridiculously geeky.  But some of us need photos for the blog, and a few cell phone snaps can be taken discretely, quickly, and without bothering anyone with a flash.

Unless you're a victim of the War on Food Blogs.

The NYT quoted a few irritated chefs, but it missed the fact that chefs have already declared war on dining room photographs -- by calling in their natural allies, the crazy electricians.  Their secret weapon:  Rotating colored lights that are creeping into too many dining rooms and ruining too many iPhone photos.

Don't tell me restaurants adopt weird neon for design.

No one thinks they look good in a room where a mirrored sign shifts from red to blue to yellow and back to red again.  Sushi Yama was the first place where I came home and saw the lights had defeated my phone.  Now, Xitomate has rotating lights in the bar.  The new Sushi Tendou lit my booth like a circus act.  I love eating at all these places, but look at that pink sushi!

The lights are just the start of the War On Food Blogs.  I predict chefs using video monitors, watching my table from the kitchen, waiting for the food to be delivered and then -- bang! -- switching the dining room lights to orange.

At this point, I am forced to escalate.  I'm planning a backpack photo studio that Mrs. HowChow could wear into restaurants.  They serve our food.  Mrs. HowChow whips out the cardboard-box-turned-light-box (thanks Strobist!).  We blaze a few flashes, and we get our shots.

I hope you won't mind.