Bummer.

From the New York Times

newyork.grubstreet.com/2011/06...

Distractions at restaurants are everywhere: cell phones, of course; overly chatty customers at a too-close table; and, increasingly, someone in the restaurant photographing the food at their table. Shutter snaps and flash pops never make a meal taste better. Some restaurants, like Momofuku Ko and Chef's Table at Brooklyn Fare, do ban the practice, but others embrace the idea of diners turning dinner into their own personal photo shoot. I bring this up not to proselytize, but instead to call attention to this irritant and to set up a few ground rules that we can hopefully all agree with in order to minimize our impact on others.

When I asked César Ramirez, chef at Chef's Table at Brooklyn Fare, about it, he told me that the whole concept confounds him: "What happened to the days when people went to a restaurant and just had a good time?" He's taken a lot of flack for the photography ban he instituted at his restaurant, but explains that he had two reasons for doing so: The first is that it's annoying both for him, and for other diners, if a customer is snapping shots of the eighteen courses served at the restaurant. His second reason surprised me: Photos floating around the web will ruin the element of surprise for his customers, most of whom make their reservations six weeks out.

What do you think?