In the world of Instagram everything is delicious. Every heap of chickpeas is glossy and swoonworthy. Every slab of long-smoked pig is a hymn to umami and crunch. You want to be eating this now, it says. And this. And this. Which is the whole point of the photo-sharing app. When people post photographs on Instagram of what they’re eating – or, to be more exact, about to eat, for once the fork goes in all composition is lost – they are inviting you to admire their life. It’s called social media for a reason.
I have no problem with this. True, I very rarely photograph my dinner but that’s only because, as restaurant critic for the Observer, I have someone to photograph my dinner for me (a professional, who returns to the restaurant after I’ve been, to get images of the dishes I’m writing about). It would be churlish in the extreme if I sneered at those who want to capture images of the fun they’re about to have. As long as they’re not disturbing other diners by using flash, or standing on a chair to get the right angle, or rigging scaffolding over the table for a rostrum shot, where’s the harm?
The only problem is that, whatever the cliches, pictures never do tell the whole story. That’s why there are 1,100 words of text accompanying the ones alongside my reviews. A dish may be Instagram-ready, it may look beautiful with the right filter, but that doesn’t tell you whether it tastes nice or whether it’s worth the money or the effort required to get to eat it. We are, of course, meant to celebrate the wisdom of crowds. If lots of people big up the same dish surely that means it has to be good? Well, if I really thought that was true, I’d immediately have to resign my column and go do something more socially useful instead.
No, sometimes the eye of an expert, or at least of a greedy man with an expense account, can be helpful. And so I set out to try half a dozen dishes from London food outlets which have been splattered repeatedly across Instagram to answer one simple question: are they really all that?
Classic bao at Bao, Lexington Street, Soho £3.75 per bao
It has just gone 11.30am on a wet autumn morning, and I am doing something I never do: I am queuing for food. Apparently, if I want to try the star dish at Bao, a small blonde-wood restaurant which does not take bookings, this is what I must do. The word ‘bao’ refers to a soft, light sweet-savoury dough from China, raised through steaming. Here, the classic bao means a folded-over pancake-like affair, filled with braised then seared pork belly, coriander, sauce and crushed peanuts. It’s a popular Taiwanese street food, which first came to prominence in the west about a decade ago when Korean-American chef David Chang put them on the menu at New York’s Momofuku Noodle Bar.
Food blogger Chris Pople (@cpople) posted a picture of these on Instagram with the caption “speechless, head-over-heels, stunned love”, and got 100 likes, the Instagram mark of approval. And after queuing for half an hour I discover that they are indeed lovely: soft dough, long cooked, crisp-edged pork, a big hit of umami from the sauce and then something fresher from the coriander. But is it worth queuing for? In all honesty, no. It’s good, better than most, but not substantially better. Wagamama now serves bao, and they’re fine. There’s even a little hole-in-the-wall place round the corner from here on Tisbury Court that will do you two duck bao for £6.50, and there’s no standing in line. Of course, the queue at the restaurant is not their fault. Good luck to them. But it is the reason why I won’t be going back.
Duck and waffle at Duck and Waffle, The Heron Tower, Bishopsgate £17
I have long felt that Dan Doherty’s cooking is far better than it needs to be, given the fabulous view out over London from here on the 40th floor of the glittering Heron Tower. His pollock meatballs in a lobster sauce or his crab, with an oyster emulsion and seaweed cracker, give voice to pitch perfect taste and a light touch. But there is a dirtier side to the menu at this 24-hour restaurant, of which the title dish – a confit duck leg, sandwiched between waffles below and a fried egg on top, with a spiced maple syrup sauce – is the star turn.
It’s perfect for Instagram, being a pleasingly literal statement about the place. Many Instagram images come with a caption along the lines of “eating duck and waffle at duck and waffle”. Plus it works at breakfast, lunch, dinner and at four in the morning. And that’s the point. It’s not subtle. The waffle is actually rather heavy. But if you need something to soak up the booze late at night, this bluntly engineered mix of protein, carbs, fat and barely refined sugar, is the very thing. I mean all this in a good way.
Doughnuts at Bread Ahead Bakery stall, Spitalfields Market £2.50 each
Has any food item received as much Instagram love as these doughnuts from Bread Ahead, a bakery and cooking school based at Borough with outlets elsewhere? Much of that is down to Clerkenwell Boy (@clerkenwellboyec1), a star food Instagrammer with more than 100,000 followers. Each time he posts pictures of them, and he does so repeatedly, they get over 1,000 likes. But he’s not alone. One post from Jo Yee (@candidsbyjo) was liked over 3,350 times. Bread Ahead plays up to this on the website with the line, “Oh, and you may have heard, we make some pretty tasty doughnuts too …”
When you finish a great doughnut you should immediately be wondering whether you could get away with another. Or three. I couldn’t even finish one of these because they are overfilled. The berry custard quickly turned into a mess. With the crème caramel, the dough part of the doughnut may be great, but it’s impossible to tell under that overdose of crème patisserie.
Fish sauce chicken wings at Smoking Goat, Denmark Street £6 for two
Instagram user Scott Price (@Scottyp1981) described these as “possibly the best chicken wings on god’s green earth”. My feeling is that Scottyp should get out less. This is the third time I’ve visited Smoking Goat, a small no-frills Thai barbecue place, where salt, sugar and smoke are pushed to the fore. The second time was only to confirm my view from the first: that these crisply battered wings, in a very sweet sticky sauce, with a back hit of salty fish, start out great and quickly become cloying. If you’re drunk, as I imagine some Instagrammers might be as they fire off the killer shot, I’m sure they’re great. But they don’t do it for me. They are also served unjointed, and unjointed wings cook unevenly. The meat beneath the batter can have a sweaty, wet texture. For what it’s worth, the chilli version, with a quick burst of fire at the end, is much better, though Instagrammed much less.
Prawn fritters at José Pizarro, Broadgate Circle £8.50
These round, golden prawn balls get an awful lot of love online. MiMi Aye (@meemalee) described them as “the best thing we had” and got 101 likes. Dips Dines (@dipsdines) declared they were “very impressed”. And you know what? So am I. José Pizarro, originally the head chef of the Brindisa group, and now with his own restaurants in Bermondsey and here at the Broadgate Circle development, knows exactly what he is doing. These are miraculous balls of prawn, apparently glued together by nothing more than charisma, with spring and bounce, perfectly spiced and seasoned. The punchy aioli on the side just adds an extra slick of loveliness. More please.
Steamed egg yolk, pork fat and port caramel dessert at Taberna do Mercado, Spitalfields Market £5
I am going to declare this London’s perfect Instagram dish. The description isn’t exactly a winner. Pork fat? In a dessert? But once you see an image of it – that golden oblong, the velvet plush of the sauce, the shimmering droplets of olive oil – you need to know. On Instagram it looks like it’s been shot in Technicolor, but that’s only because it looks like that in real life too.
And then there’s the fact that it is made by a chef, Nuno Mendes, who is about as hot as it’s possible to be right now. Mere mortals can’t get to try his food at the clipboard-Nazi-guarded Chiltern Firehouse, but we can get to try it here at his more humble Portuguese place. So the dish has a back story. And you know what? It’s fabulous. Put aside the whole pig fat thing; it’s no different from suet – beef fat – in sweet steamed puddings. The oblong is the smoothest, richest set sweet custard you will ever taste, like 2-denier silk stockings being pulled across your tongue. A few flakes of sea salt across the top give crunch, and that light, limpid port sauce lubricates everything. The food writer Fuchsia Dunlop (@fuchsiadunlop) described it on Instagram as “gorgeous”.
What she said.
