Saturday, February 21, 2026 |
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This week has been a reminder that eating out now comes with an extra layer of theatre – whether you asked for it or not. Jeremy King's gripe about influencers lands because it names something many of us have watched unfold: diners treating restaurants like sets, staff like supporting cast and the loos like a changing room. Nobody wants to spend good money eating next to a ring light. But the leap from "please behave" to "no influencers" is where it wobbles. "Influencer" isn't a personality defect – it's a job, and often a useful one for restaurants trying to fill tables in tough times. Plenty of creators film quietly, book off-peak, avoid other guests and do what critics have always done, just in a format that reaches people faster. The fix isn't blanket bans, but clear rules: no tripods, no blocking spaces, no disrupting service. Restaurants have a behaviour problem, not a creator problem.
If that's about modern dining etiquette, pie and mash is about what happens when a food refuses to play the modern game at all. Few dishes are as defiantly unphotogenic: a pale mound of mash, a suet-bottomed pie, then that jump-scare parsley liquor. Beige, beige, and council green. And yet the shops themselves – tiled walls, marble tables, old signage – are catnip for the nostalgia economy. The story here isn't simple decline but visibility. James Dimitri, who's built a following visiting every London pie and mash shop, argues many of the survivors are still busy – and that closures tend to hit those with "zero online presence". At Noted Eel & Pie House in Leytonstone, fourth-gen Alfie Hak is keeping a 100-year-old business loud on TikTok, pulling in tourists and "new Londoners" who come specifically because they saw it on their phones. Pie and mash doesn't need rebranding. It needs not to vanish quietly.
Then there's cabbage: the least glamorous vegetable in the supermarket, now improbably Vogue-adjacent and Pinterest-certified as "cabbage core". The useful truth is that cabbage never stopped being valuable; it just stopped being fashionable. Its diet-culture era (hello, cabbage soup) turned a nourishing staple into a punishment mechanism, and the comeback is partly a correction: we're in the age of fibre, gut health and blood sugar regulation, and cabbage happens to be excellent at all of it. Nutritionist Rob Hobson's point is the sensible one – it isn't magic, but it is genuinely good for you, feeding gut bacteria and supporting the gut lining. Also, yes, it can make you gassy. Reality remains undefeated.
Speaking of fibre: the fibre gap is the rare health story that doesn't ask you to become a different person. Only 4 per cent of UK adults hit 30g a day, despite all the microbiome chat. What works here is the framing: not punishment salads, just normal dinners with stealth benefits. Cavolo nero does the heavy lifting – stirred through chilli, folded into fajitas, crisped into topping – alongside pulses, wholegrains and a comforting wholewheat pastitsio. It's "healthy eating" as a shopping list tweak, not a personality transplant.
Ping Coombes, meanwhile, makes the case for treating rice with the respect we reserve for sourdough and steak resting. Her rules are practical and persuasive: wash it, use the absorption method, don't drain it, let it rest properly, and freeze extra in portions so you can have "instant" rice without the sad packet. It's technique, yes, but also a reminder that rice is the thing that holds a meal together – and that badly cooked rice can ruin even the best dish.
And for a small February joy: Ryan Riley's sweet-and-sour apple crumble with sweet basil cream. Tamarind brings sharpness, cardamom warms, fennel in the topping adds a gentle herbal edge, and basil sugar folded through cream makes a familiar pudding feel newly alive. Thick socks, dark skies, something bubbling in the oven – not a trend, just a very good idea.
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Jeremy King is right about badly behaved diners – but he's wrong about banning influencers |
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Jeremy King's complaints about disruptive diners ring true – but by banning influencers from his establishments, he is missing the point, writes Hannah Twiggs. Restaurants have a behaviour problem, not a creator problem
| Jeremy King's recent broadside against influencers – published in The Standard with the weary authority of a restaurateur who has seen every dining fad come and go – struck a nerve this week because it described something many diners have seen first-hand.
King said he had seen guests treating his restaurant, The Park in London, less as somewhere to dine than somewhere to perform. Influencers arriving with suitcases of outfits. Photoshoots staged in the lavatories. Groups blocking facilities while filming. Staff forced into the awkward role of bystanders as the dining room became, in effect, a set. Not fleeting irritations but repeated patterns of behaviour which, he argued, disrupted service and unsettled other guests.
His response was equally direct. A sign at reception now makes the house position clear, warning against disruptive filming practices – ring lights, tripods and anything liable to disturb other diners. In other words: come to eat, not to shoot content.
King is not alone in attempting to draw boundaries around modern dining behaviour. At his sushi omakase counter, Endo Kazutoshi has banned phones entirely. "Atmosphere is not decoration. It is discipline," he explains. "Phones introduce distance. Even a small screen can become a wall."
Borough Market has introduced restrictions on when and how filming can take place. Chris D'Sylva, founder of London restaurant Dorian, keeps a logbook of diners' behaviour and has publicly declared he will not be offering complimentary meals in exchange for influencer coverage – a stance delivered, inevitably, via social media.
Read the full article here
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Enjoy endless inspiration with recipes, interviews and more in your latest Indy/Eats food and drink magazine, one of your Independent Premium subscription benefits |
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| A spirited homage to the grain that feeds half the world, Rice is Ping Coombes's celebration of rice as more than a side dish – it's culture, comfort and daily ritual. Drawing on her Malaysian roots and two-time MasterChef triumph, she offers over 100 recipes and indispensable techniques to cook, season and enjoy rice perfectly every time.
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