A picture is worth more than a thousand bikinis

I was recently told that the fourth best bar in the world had noticed a surprising fact: many of its diners did not finish the cocktail they had ordered and, approximately, left 30% of it. The reason was not so much that the flavor combinations were not liked, but rather that visitors had a drive beyond alcohol: photography. A curious fact that raises a modern question: do people still go to restaurants and bars to eat/drink? 

I saw it recently at La Bodega la Puntual. A stylish couple ordered an enormous quantity of dishes. They skillfully arranged them on the table, exchanged them among themselves, and captured everything with a state-of-the-art phone. In the end, they managed to create a still life as perfect as Siméon's. But the foodie count was overwhelming. Number of patatas bravas consumed?: Five. Of anchovies?: Three. Of bread with tomato?: Not even touched. These people were not here to eat; they were here to see and be seen digitally.

I also perceived it in a restaurant in a Barcelona hotel. Throughout dinner, one of the people at the table made several live videos ---for an audience that, I would later verify, did not exceed a thousand users--- explaining in detail each of the recipes served during the menu. They showed them from the side and with a zenithal shot, making travellings with the phone and spinning the device as if it were a sprinkler. The future is more Wes Anderson than Kubrick. 

Perhaps because of these trends, some New York restaurants have already begun to prohibit certain uses of cameras in their establishments. This is the case of Momofuku Ko, David Chang's establishment located in the East Village with a table for six diners and a menu that exceeds 100 dollars in average price. The chef had previously prohibited the use of flash in his establishments, following in the footsteps of Heston Blumenthal's Fat Duck, but now he has stood firm in the decision not to allow anyone to keep a digital memory and, for example, no type of video recording can be made.

Along these lines, I perfectly remember a visit to Disfrutar, a year ago, where I took longer than expected to finish the first bite of the tasting menu. The waiter, with nerves on edge due to my photographic insistence, came to the table openly annoyed and blurted out, "Now we'll have to serve that course again, because melted it's worth nothing." In reality, I came out ahead: for 250 euros, I got two first courses; one melted and the other just right.

And it is that one must differentiate between two types of foodographer: the one who orders food to take a picture and then leaves without having eaten it all; and the one who spends some time taking pictures, but ultimately has the soul of a glutton. In fact, there is a term that explains this second case and is linked to the psychology of the diner. "The camera eats first", describes the act of taking photos before starting to gobble, usually followed by uploading them to social media.

In this way, the photographer metaphorically feeds the camera before physically feeding themselves. And here there is not only a question of ego, but some specialists believe that foodstagramming can make food taste better. It seems contradictory because in many cases these ingredients will be colder than if we tasted them at the moment, but the magic of the psyche, as we know, follows its own rules.

What is the path to follow, then, for Barcelona restaurants? Should they encourage photographs and celebrate them as a marketing strategy, or rather prohibit them and feed the culinary mystery? This choice should also be linked to the selection of tableware and cutlery ---is it possible not to photograph a glass from El Taller de Piñero?--- and also the space, if we accept that taste has nothing to do with the environment. But the big question is whether, faced with the prohibition of taking videos or photos in a restaurant, we would continue or not continue visiting it.