At a small restaurant in Tennessee, USA.
I don’t like that they asked an LLM to graphic design the entire menu, but why in the name of robot jesus did they look at the result and say “great. Love it. Print 100 copies.”
The food pictures made me physically ill. They’re really upsetting! I told the Waitress, who agreed that the pics were awful, and the manager/owner(?) who didn’t seem to care.
There are LLM inconsistencies all over, too, like icons changing from page to page.
How hard is it to take a picture of the food after it’s been prepared??? God damn…
That’s a bit harsh. A lot of the pictures you see on menus are not what they cooked in the kitchen. Because cooked food doesn’t look sexy enough. Or only when it’s hot and then steam coming off it makes it look worse in the image. So they use glue to gloss things up, replace entire ingredients (e.g. motor oil for maple syrup), etc. Food photography is serious business. And expensive.
Commercial photographer here, shot for big brands and independents, with some super-fucking-expensive stylists. Never used anything like that, with the exception of coffee brands using whipped face cream instead of edible cream because it lasts much longer on set and they don’t give a fuck. Brands like McDonalds have learned from being sued, and document the whole process, weighing each ingredient so they can prove it’s real. The reason it looks fake as fuck is that they spend ~30 mins assembling one burger with tweezers and pins and hand-selected pieces of salad etc, syringes to pipe the sauce exactly where they want it etc.
I agree that’s the way it’s “always” done, but I disagree that it’s the only way it can be done, or that it’s even the best way to do it for a Mom&Pop joint. See also: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=asDjcgiwIiY
yeah, I’ve been shooting my own images for the mealie i setup and even perfectly arranging the plate and putting all the kitchen lights on it, it just looks kinda meh. Except for sandwhiches. bread always looks fine AF.
Not that I’m on their side, but it can take a lot of prep and experience to take good food pics. Now having said that, often my favorite places have pictures that are decades old and faded, and probably weren’t great pictures to begin with.
I hear this said so often. But at the same time, sharing photos of your meal on social media is pretty popular and it still makes people call it out as looking delicious. Those photos are usually very amateur, but look better than anything on many food menus even before all the slop.
yeah it takes prep and time, unless you just take pics of the food you’re vending and be honest.
there’s an idea. just advertise what you’re selling. wild huh?
anyway, both prepared pics and casual shots are better than literal fucking nightmare fuel.