Mind the Rant: have food influencers ruined London’s restaurant scene?

God I really have had enough of food influencers. I would also like to point out for legal reasons that everything in this article such as the descriptions of videos and people are fictional.

In our wonderfully strange modern world, we have created viral celebrities for every conceivable niche. There are the stars of domestic hygiene, those who chronicle their delivery driver grind, even a cycling vigilante who patrols for drivers on their phones. But the worst of them all, the one I loathe, is the food influencer.

Say you type ‘good food London’ into TikTok or Instagram, what would come up? In fact, why don’t we give it a go now.

Well, typically, I imagine, it’s a sweating, red faced, chubby orb, devoid of eyebrows with a vapid expression and somewhat resembling a hairless sphinx cat. Grinning like a simpleton, he asks a question with the verbal dexterity of a toddler: is this London’s sloppiest, juiciest, cheesiest burger?

A question that nobody has ever really wanted to know the answer to, but because of how social media algorithms work, the one that we are having crammed down our throats.

What you see next is a spectacle of such incredible gastronomic vulgarity it would make Henry VIII shudder in disgust. He rams the repulsive thing into his maw and down the gullet. Torrents of juice and grease run over his bloated fingers, down his chin and, likely, all over the camera man. Nearly choking on the first bite, he does not pause, nor does he pause to wipe. He is an artist and he is committed to his disgusting art. Physically dripping with a fatty viscous cocktail of sauces, droplets soaking into his shirt and trousers, he carries on. Then, perhaps as an encore, a plunge of the burger into a tub of gravy. The baptism for a meal that was affront to God from very the first bite.

As he returns for the second, he locks eyes with the camera with an open mouth, offering you a full view of the masticated, grease-soaked mulch within. He attempts a simile, the sort that would scrape a ‘B’ in a Year 6 creative writing homework. “The flavours,” he spits, unleashing a confetti of burger bits on his fellow diners, “are jumping around on my tongue like grasshoppers!”

Wow, what mastery of the English language. Then you see the millions of views and comments and think what on earth has the world come to?

Here are people who have found their natural calling, they’re top of their game, no predators to end their disgusting practice and tragically it seems, not a napkin in sight. Imagine getting paid to be absolutely gross.

The next clip starts with that stupid AI voice: “POV you found London’s best steak and chips.”

You know what’s coming already, the digital drumroll please… Le Relais de fucking Venise L’Entrecôte.

The steak, a sirloin cut despite the restaurant name meaning ribeye, presented with the pomp of a holy sacrament. It languishes under the weight of their famed secret Sauce Verte, a herby atrocity with the colour and consistency of lawnmower clipings.

And by the way, it’s not a fucking secret, anyone with a functioning set of taste buds can deconstruct what’s fucking in it. The only true mystery is our collective suspension of disbelief and refusal to admit that you are being fed what amounts to mashed up anchovy and tarragon pond scum and worse, enjoying it.

The AI voice continues “And the best bit… you get a second serving!”

A second serving! For a meal costing a mere £33! What staggering largesse! What you’ve failed to mention, you cretin, is that it’s the other half of your steak! You’re paying to have your meal in two parts. This isn’t generosity, you are not a diner being indulged rather are a unit on their gastronomic conveyor belt. They serve you some meat, a pyre of perfectly adequate frites, a salad, offer a second serving, all on a disposable paper tablecloth, you quickly eat the food and off you fuck. It’s engineered to have you out the room within 40 minutes.

And it’s genius. That’s why there’s always queue outside. A conga line of the hungry and the unimaginative, a pantheon of morons, waiting for their turn in this theatre of Tik Tok instigated perceived value.

You scroll on. Next up is some absolute tool, most likely American, paying double figures for some chocolate-dipped strawberries at Borough Market. I don’t even need to make a comment about this.

But let’s talk about Borough Market. There was a time when I was younger, now buried deep beneath the fake cottage industry dressing and truffle oil, when it was an actual market that sold nice things for a decent price. Now it’s a stage where ‘authentic produce’, whatever that means, is sold at a ludicrous markup to stupid tourists.

It has become, along with its louder, more tattooed Camden sibling, one of the twin pillars of places no actual Londoner would ever go for a meal.

“But the chips! What about the loaded chips!”

Oh, you mean the ones that will give you a heart attack just by looking at them? The ones that have been dusted with every herb, salt and spice that they could find in the Schwartz warehouse? For the prices they charge I’d at least expect it to have ground up unicorn horn dusted over it. They look fucking disgusting. They look like something your dog would shit out after eating a pack of crayons. You could quite easily make this in your own kitchen for the price of a bag of potatoes, a shake of some generic seasoning and some cheese. Yet, people will gladly part with more than a tenner for it. So let us call this what it is then, not a premium meal, but a tax for being a lazy stupid cunt.

The sad tragedy is that food influencers have ruined what was once a noble and important profession, that of the food critic. It must be weird being Coren, Mashler or Rayner crafting articles every week, each sentence a reduction of decades of knowledge, only to be drowned out by some bloke screaming about the “graviest” burger he’s ever fist-fucked into his gob.

A final beautiful descent into madness would be for a paper to send one of them, and for pure comedic value let it be Coren, a man who gets annoyed about everything, up North to Darlington. Not for a hidden gem or avant-garde opening but a jacket potato. A full, double-page weekend spread with the his clever prose normally reserved for a three-star Michelin joint, instead dedicated to the showdown between Spudman vs Spudbros.

But sadly it seems society has traded the informed writer for the carnival jester. And we are left with a food scape where the loudest, dumbest voice, shouting about the wettest, stupidest burger, is the one that gets heard.

They are the new arbiters of taste, the ones that will make restaurants, bring the queues and decide the success, and they’re completely unqualified to do the job. Which is precisely why every single viral restaurant sensation is a profound fucking disappointment.