Clockwise from left: Thai green curry, The Noodle House, Jumeirah Emirates Towers; green tea cheesecake; Jumeirah Dhevanafushi; dolma at Bilgah Beach Hotel, Baku. Opposite page, clockwise from top left: steak at The Hide, Jumeirah Al Qasr; lobster salad at Jumeirah Port Soller Hotel & Spa, Mallorca; chocolate orange confit, Jumeirah at Etihad Towers
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Isn’t there a danger, with all this framing and clicking and cropping and filtering and fiddling with the contrast and #-ing and @-ing, that by the time you have taken the perfect photo and captioned it, your lunch, so devotedly prepared by the chef, has gone cold?
in chocolate fondue and the piles of loukoumades, or sweet Arabic pastries, drizzled with honey and speckled with sesame and nigella seeds. These are much Instagrammed and ‘liked’ many thousands of time over. Spector says dessert photographs are among the most popular on her feed. Everyone is inclined to like a plate piled high with brownies. Rika Yusmita, the manager of Zheng He’s Chinese restaurant in the Jumeirah Mina A’Salam hotel in Dubai, has observed a new trend: guests who don’t wait for a menu but show waiters their smartphone and say: “I’ll have one of those”. Often they won’t even know what it is but are “crazy” about social media and eager to try the dishes they have seen on Instagram. The chefs whet guests’ appetites by posting pictures on the restaurant’s feed (@zhenghesdubai) as they experiment in the kitchen.
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Even plating has become an art. What good is a dull cream canvas when you are painting a masterpiece in spun sugar and whipped cream? At the Jumeirah Port Soller Hotel and Spa in Mallorca, the kitchens now have as many as seven types of plate, each for different dishes. Everything from colour, material, size and shape is considered, says Rodrigo Ofner, the hotel’s director of food and beverages. The spectacle of serving can be just as important as the dish itself. Order the Beijing duck in Zheng He’s and it comes to the table in ceremonial procession – the duck, then the chef to carve it, then the condiments, then the pancakes, each with a dedicated waiter – heralded by clapping and the ringing of gongs: an excuse not just for an Instagram photo but a mini video.