‘Good food’ in an Instagram age: Rethinking hierarchies of culture, criticism and taste

Abstract

Through historical, economic and technological contextualisation and empirical data analysis, this article explores the cultural purchase the image-sharing app Instagram and the printed Michelin Guide have on contemporary food criticism. Both platforms contribute to popular understandings of ‘good food’. Yet, there are important functional and discursive distinctions in how culinary criticism is done in Instagram vis-à-vis Michelin. To that end, this article focuses on London’s restaurant scene and proposes the concept of the Instagram gaze as a means of understanding the representational repertoires and knowledge claims advanced by foodies on visual social media platforms. The Instagram gaze also facilitates insight into the relationship between Instagrammers’ culinary judgements and Michelin’s.