Any chef who can make an epoch-defining dish out of prawns’ brains deserves a hearing. Who knew, before Michael O’Hare hit the BBC’s Great British Menu programme, that prawns even had brains? The phrase “he has the brains of a prawn”, were it ever to be coined, would be unlikely to denote high intelligence. Prawns’ brains sound like chickens’ tails or breast of leek — almost impossible cooking ingredients. Even prawns probably don’t know where to find prawns’ brains.
Respect is due to the man who could locate, cook and apparently make an artwork out of them. It is with trepidation, therefore, that we suggest that on one aspect of modern restaurant management Mr O’Hare might be wrong. He believes that diners at restaurants ought to be banned from taking photographs of the food. It is his view that enjoying and picture-taking are antagonistic activities. Instead of snapping “you should be eating and drinking and making merry,” he says.
Mr O’Hare’s problem is that this horse has already bolted. When he said that food photography with smartphones was weird because “it’s like me wanting to take pictures of my girlfriend during sex”, he demonstrated a naivete about the modern world; a naivete that googling the phrase “girlfriend during sex” would soon dispel. When he added that “you wouldn’t take pictures of art in a gallery”, he showed that he hadn’t been near one in a decade.
Our objection is that Mr O’Hare not only wants his customers to enjoy his food, but also to dictate how they enjoy it. These days mobile phone technology allows you to eat your cake and have it in perpetuity. You walk out of the restaurant with not just the fading gustatory memory but with a razorsharp visual one. Which, lest anyone forgets, you have paid for.