Food Shaming And Other Hobbies Of The Online Foodie

In this Instagram age we live in, anyone can be a food blogger.

You don’t even have to be good at writing about or critiquing food – as long as you eat out or cook a lot, can take a decent photo, and have a certain amount of followers, you can call yourself a food blogger. So now we see people trying to set themselves apart by carving a niche, a gimmick – whether that’s creating a place for foodie culture backlash, or finding a cute way of presenting food that is reblog- or share-worthy. Here we look at some examples of popular niche food-related social media accounts, examine why they’ve struck a chord, and ponder what that says about us.

Food-shaming

Let’s start with the backlash stuff, because who doesn’t enjoy a bit of schadenfreude? We’ve got an Internet Food Police in Australia (he’s a Sydney bloke, to be precise), and he goes by the name of Cook Suck. He’s on Twitter, Instagram (5.3k followers), Facebook (9.1k likes) and maintains a blog, where he just tears down the awful photos of truly shitty meals that some people willingly upload onto the internet. Cook Suck’s lengthy spiels have a rage-filled charm to them, and as well as being entertaining and hilariously snarky they’re often timely, address newsworthy topics (for example, he rips into someone’s photo of bacon that was hashtagged #fuckhalal) and food trends that just won’t die, and speculate about the reasons why anyone would proudly share with other people a photo of defrosted veggies and a sad clump of meat. Cook Suck toes the line of taking it too far at times, and seems to cop a lot of abusive comments from the kind of people who would post the pics he mocks; he also seems to relish these insults. Cookingforbae on Instagram (144k followers) works with a similar concept, except they opt for snide, short captions rather than long rants. And Once Loyal Customer on Facebook shares the best and worst online restaurant reviews, many of which seem to come from entitled fusspots.

Then there’s the WeWantPlates Twitter account (33.5k followers), which calls out restaurants and cafes that don’t serve their meals in bowls or plates, but rather on wooden boards, in wire baskets and so on instead – because trendy, right? Sometimes it’s twee but harmless, but often it’s impractical and doesn’t even look appetising: pulled pork in a cardboard box, dessert on a fake newspaper (why?), chips in a pint mug, ice cream on a slate. Wooden serving boards were chic at first but they’re everywhere now and if you stop to think about the hygiene aspect, well, some of these cheap boards look like they’d absorb the natural skin grease of anyone who touches them. Detergent can only do so much. Tip: hip crockery’s all about handmade ceramics, texture and shape now.

There’s this Japanese YouTube account called Miniature Space (200k subscribers). Its videos all show someone (or their hands, at least) cooking various foods (burgers, yakitori, cake, French fries, curry, pancakes, sushi…), in super small sizes, using real ingredients in tiny amounts, with tiny utensils and appliances, in a tiny kitchen. It’s ridiculous and it’s fun to watch and also weirdly soothing to see a giant-looking hand holding a miniscule knife with the tips of its thumb and forefinger, slicing through a miniature loaf of bread. The most popular vids have more than 1.2million views.

Another popular Japanese YouTube cooking channel is Cooking With Dog (almost a million subscribers). Its videos are all cooking tutorials, with the unnamed chef going through the recipe steps while a dog, Francis, narrates in thickly-accented English. Sometimes Francis is wearing accessories like a bow-tie and glasses. It’s as adorable as it sounds, and informative, too!

Going back to the miniature food thing, RachelsLittleThings on Instagram is a miniature artist, and one of her mini creations is food – mostly cakes and sweets. These ones aren’t edible (she uses polymer clay among other media) but it’s riveting to watch the videos of her decorating the tiny sculptures with such a steady hand.

Some people stretch themselves too thin trying to cover as much as possible. Others have worked out that success means picking one thing and sticking to it. See Aussie burger review blog The Burger Adventure (19.1k Instagram followers). Other food publications use them as a source; they’ve proved themselves to be experts in their field. They rate burgers on a five-tier scale from ‘Don’t Bother’ to ‘Go Now!’, with notes for ‘sleepiness’ and how many serviettes you’ll need. 

TheRamenRater.com does a similar thing but with instant noodles; since the late noughties, Hans Lienesch has reviewed more than 715 varieties of instant noodles. After the blog took off, people from around the world, online retailers and distributors, and even bigger corporations started sending packets of noodles over to him. TheRamenRater has also been mentioned in an impressive amount of articles, mostly from Asian media. Though the website itself is not much to look at, it actually has a lot of useful information for lovers of the instant noodle; the guy is thorough, like, he’s got a section purely dedicated to the forks that come with the packets.

Potato scallops. Potato cakes. A fiery debate about the deep-fried snack’s name broke out on Aussie Twitter in October last year, which some of you may have witnessed/participated in. Whichever state you come from, we can all agree that potato cakes (VIC-based writer here so VIC rules) are a national treasure. That’s why we’re hoping Instagram account Cakeitorleaveit will take off. It’s fairly new and just Melbourne-based, rating cakes according to batter, slice, crunch, atmosphere and condiments. Maybe as it expands it might team up with potato cake enthusiasts in other states so that our whole country’s covered for potato cake reviews – who knows? In any case, Cakeitorleaveit is doing the Melbourne public a great service.

As the adage goes, we eat with our eyes before we eat with our mouths. The presentation of a meal affects how we think it’s going to taste. Some plating is so damn beautiful it makes the food look like it belongs in a gallery, not wasting away in someone’s stomach. ChefJacquesLamerde on Instagram (57.2k followers) shows off some serious plating techniques in his photos, but there’s a twist: he only uses junk food (occasionally using trendy garnishes such as edible flowers) – thereby parodying high-end dining, and small, expensive meals where looks overshadow substance. His profile description is “small portions | tweezered everything” and he writes only in caps-lock, using wanky food descriptors like ‘hand-torn [Twinkie chunks]’, ‘[Oreo] soil’, ‘[Powerade] gel’, ‘[Miracle Whip] crema’ … He’s an artist, a genius, a joker.

Another Instagram/blog turning junk food into slick art is Fat And Furious Burger (21.2k Instagram followers), from the minds of two French graphic designers. They make these wack burgers, experimenting with things you would not think to put between buns, and present the results in an innovative way that’s made to be photographed. The photos themselves are incredible: zany, bright, fun and much of the time surreal-looking. The burgers are often made into other objects, like an oyster, snowman, space ship, ice cream, mutated monster/animal, pineapple. In September last year, they released a cookbook of 60 of their recipes. 

Less intense and more food-based is the food collage work of JuliesKitchen on Instagram (112k followers), which you can find under the tag #julieskitchenfoodcollage. She manually arranges cut-up fruits, vegetables, herbs and other things into an aesthetically-pleasing pattern, then takes a snap. Julie says the collages started out as a way for her to showcase seasonal local offerings from markets and her garden, then evolved into a study of plant design and colour theory, and now she does custom collages for clients and even teaches her way of food styling in a class on SkillShare. She’s making money from playing with food – dreams can come true. IdaFrosk on Instagram (280k followers) takes it even further, literally creating cartoon-like pictures of animals, people and cute nature scenes from shapes made of food.