Haute Cuisine 2.0

María García Muriel on how social media has changed our approach to eating out  

Communicating with chefs has never been so easy. Nor has seeing what goes on in their kitchens. Thanks to social media, we live in an open-source era where chefs not only exhibit their dishes and the step-by-step processes involved in their creation, but also share what they purchase in markets, where they eat, and even their extra-culinary hobbies with the public.

Chef Pepe Solla playing guitar at Festival Port América in Galicia (From the collection of Real Academia de Gastronomia)

First Twitter and, later, Instagram have brought people closer to the universe of gastronomy, placing a special emphasis on haute cuisine. These social networks are responsible for a change in the way cooks interact with one another, and they entail a form of communication between chefs and their customers that can be fluid at times.

These new ways of sharing information trigger an interesting boomerang effect. Diners (social network users, both food critics and people with no professional relationship with the sector) come to a restaurant attracted by the dishes that the chef or their kitchen team have uploaded to their social media accounts. In turn, they photograph the dishes they eat and share them on their own profiles, influencing others to want to try them.

Similarly, following certain diners and chefs on social media provides insights (that are generally reliable and accurate) into available produce or suppliers.

This happens both organically (with users sharing in a genuine and selfless way), as well as encouraged by food communication agencies. And although this might seem like covert advertising, it doesn't always imply a lack of authenticity, despite its commercial purpose.

Gastronomy beyond the Kitchen

Anybody who has ever used Twitter is familiar with the concept of trending topics: the topic of the moment that everybody is talking about, that "needs" to be talked about.

These topics extend beyond social media, filtering into our everyday conversations. ‘Gastronomy’ is no longer just about cooking. It's not about preparing food to eat as an act of survival. It's not even about phrases like, "My mom makes the best stew". Gastronomy has become a regular and recurring topic of social small talk.

Even if you’ve never set foot in their restaurants, a large percentage of the population can put a face and a name to many chefs (in part, due to mass media) and pepper their coffee-break chats with anecdotes about new dishes, techniques, and restaurants visited. This means that the "usual places" — those restaurants where the owner or the manager knows the customers by name — are no longer visited as often. Instead, people go to new restaurants they have discovered by browsing social media— restaurants where it's likely diners will end up being known by their social media handle.

Open Source

Chef Quique Dacosta showing his products on Instagram (From the collection of Real Academia de Gastronomia)

The presence of chefs on social networks, whether through their own accounts or those of their restaurants, has opened up the kitchen in a way that was unthinkable a decade ago. Kitchens were once spaces reserved for workers, where only a few loyal or insistent customers would go, asking to see the chefs at the end of their meal.

This opening-up goes beyond the physical space of the kitchen, but also what is happening inside it: the ingredients, the steps for preparing dishes, and the equipment.

This represents a change in attitude that the chef Quique Dacosta described in an interview in the newspaper El País: "The new cooks have no fear of showing everything and telling all. We are living in an open-source era with the sharing of the kitchen. The days of 'only my team and I enter my kitchen' are over."

Debates on the Current State of the Culinary World

Two of the issues raised by this new digital phenomenon are the no-show of diners with confirmed reservations and the alleged plagiarism of culinary creations.

A chef could open their Instagram account one morning before work, only to find a dish that looks suspiciously like one they serve or have served in their restaurant… but in a nearby restaurant or in another thousands of miles away.

The question is: is this plagiarism or inspiration? The answer is more complicated than you might think. Debate on Twitter is rife, and talks and meetings have been organized with specialists in intellectual property law to try to clarify the matter.

Tweet from Dabiz Muñoz (about "no show" phenomena in restaurants) (From the collection of Real Academia de Gastronomia)

Complaints about the no-shows of customers who have confirmed and reconfirmed their bookings are also all over social networks, and chefs usually receive the same sharp reply from many diners: why don't they start asking for a credit card when making a reservation? Not many entrepreneurs in the sector are keen on the idea, for the time being.

When diners do let the restaurant know that they won't be able to attend at the last minute, however, chefs can take to social media to post that a free table is available for that day. This is a great opportunity for the lucky diners that snap up the table, especially at restaurants with long waiting lists.

The Team

The opening up of haute cuisine in the last decade, combined with the use of digital tools (blogs, video-sharing websites, social networks, and customer service evaluation forms) and the rapid increase of gastronomy conferences has naturally led to increased visibility of the team. We all know that it's not just the head chef that makes a restaurant— a whole team of chefs, maître d', and sommeliers is required. And now foodies can put faces and names to them, as well as follow them on social media, and learn about their team dynamics or, for example, what they themselves eat from the team's menu.

Personal Life

Chef Paco Roncero running in Madrid (From the collection of Real Academia de Gastronomia)

Many chefs can't resist telling their followers what they do in their free time, be it playing an instrument, walking in the mountains, running, or spending time with their family or pets. Just as with celebrities, these types of normal, daily-life activities can help bring the general public closer to the sector of haute cuisine, traditionally reserved for people with high purchasing power. Someone who, two decades ago, could never have imagined visiting a restaurant where the tasting menu costs more than 200 euros, may now be able to save to afford the experience, or make trips to particular destinations based on the food on offer.

This is, at least in part, thanks to social networks. Chefs share their creations there and open themselves up to questions and suggestions with just one click of a button. The architects of haute cuisine have never been as accessible as they are in the second decade of the 21st century.

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