AI food photography by cuisine
Every cuisine runs on its own mix of dish shapes, and that mix decides which delivery-platform crop problems your menu keeps hitting.
American diner
Most cuisines have a shape problem. A diner has the opposite one: pancakes, burgers, fried chicken and milkshakes need four different setups, and a menu shot piecemeal looks like four restaurants.
stacked height · crisp textures · tall vessels
Bar and pub food
A bar's lighting is the thing it spent money on, and it is the single worst condition to photograph food in. The room you are proud of is also what the platforms' background rule rejects.
multiple pieces · crisp textures · tall vessels
Brazilian
A rodízio sells unlimited table service at one price, so nothing on it is a portion — and every platform photo rule assumes the thing you sell is a portion. What a Brazilian menu's photographs depict has to be settled before anyone decides how to light them.
spread plates · multiple pieces · stacked height
Café
A café's drinks menu is thirty listings served in the same cup. The vessel cannot separate them, the platforms require a separate photo for each, and the only variable left is the surface of the drink.
tall vessels · stacked height · glossy surfaces
Caribbean
What separates one Caribbean listing from the next is sealed inside a pastry or buried under the same bed of rice and peas. On this menu the variable is the smallest thing in the frame.
flat rounds · spread plates · crisp textures
Chinese
A Chinese takeout menu can run to a hundred items, and most of them are brown sauce over white rice. DoorDash requires a separate photo for every one — and rejects duplicates.
liquid bowls · spread plates · multiple pieces
Deli and sandwich shop
A deli menu is twenty-five listings that are all, unavoidably, a sandwich. The cut face is the only thing that separates one from another, which makes where you cut a merchandising decision.
stacked height · spread plates
Ethiopian
On an Ethiopian menu the plate is a piece of bread, and it is the same piece of bread under every listing. The repeating part of the frame cannot be cropped away or cleaned up, because removing it removes food.
flat rounds · spread plates · multiple pieces
Filipino
Adobo, kaldereta, mechado, afritada and menudo are five dishes at five prices that photograph as one brown bowl — often with the same pork in all five, which removes the fix every other menu uses.
liquid bowls · spread plates · tall vessels
French
A French plate is arranged before it is cooked. On a composed plate a crop does not cost you food at the edges — it costs you the arrangement, which is the thing being sold.
spread plates · glossy surfaces · tall vessels
German
A schnitzel is pounded until it hangs over the edge of its own plate. DoorDash wants at least 80% of the item visible and the item filling 50% to 70% of the frame, and an item bigger than its vessel has no camera distance that does both.
spread plates · tall vessels · crisp textures
Greek
A Greek kitchen runs a short line — grilled meat, feta, tomato, onion, lemon, oregano, yogurt — and reassembles it into a long menu. The shapes differ; the surface detail does not, and that is what a duplicates rejection is made of.
wrapped cylinders · spread plates · multiple pieces
Indian
Char is what proves a dish came off a tandoor, and char is the first thing a thumbnail turns into either burnt patches or noise. Indian menus lose their best evidence in compression.
liquid bowls · spread plates · crisp textures
Israeli
Six listings leave an Israeli kitchen on the same round plate, and what separates them sits inside a well swept into the spread. Below the rim is where this menu keeps its differences, and it is the one place a crop cannot reach.
liquid bowls · multiple pieces · wrapped cylinders
Italian
An Italian menu contains the two silhouettes that crop in opposite directions. A pizza is a circle and a plate of pasta is a wide spread, and a single framing decision cannot serve both.
flat rounds · spread plates · stacked height
Japanese
A Japanese menu is built from two shapes — bowls and scattered pieces — and both of them make every item look like the item above it. The crop is not the hard part. Telling twenty rolls apart is.
liquid bowls · multiple pieces
Korean
Banchan is what a Korean table looks like, and the single-item rule is not what keeps it out of an item photo — the framing and fill rules are. The most recognisable image of this cuisine is still the one you cannot upload.
liquid bowls · multiple pieces · crisp textures
Mediterranean
One chicken shawarma is sold four ways: a wrap, a plate, a bowl and a salad. Four listings, four required photos, four different shapes — from a single protein cooking on a single spit.
spread plates · wrapped cylinders
Mexican
Rice, beans and salsa arrive with almost everything on a Mexican menu — and none of them is a second menu item, so the single-item rule is not what catches this cuisine. The framing and fill rules are, and the plate you actually serve is still not the photo you upload.
wrapped cylinders · multiple pieces
Moroccan
A tagine's conical lid is the most recognisable object in the cuisine, and it hides the item completely. Six tagines under six identical lids are six copies of one photograph, which is exactly what a duplicates rejection is made of.
liquid bowls · flat rounds · tall vessels
Peruvian
Ceviche cures on the plate, so the fish is still changing while you light it. A photograph freezes one minute of a dish that keeps moving — and 'the exact same item', the only thing a platform lets you reuse a photo for, stops being a stable thing.
spread plates · multiple pieces · crisp textures
Pizzeria
A whole pizza is the only food that naturally fills a 4:1 header band. Pizzerias are the one business whose hero product fits the hardest crop on the platform — and most of them never use it.
flat rounds · multiple pieces
Polish
Żurek arrives in a bowl you can eat. Once the vessel is an ingredient, every framing rule the delivery platforms publish is measured against an edge you had to draw yourself — and so is the number of photographs you owe.
liquid bowls · flat rounds · crisp textures
Southern and soul food
Half a Southern menu is sides, and sides are the least photogenic food there is: mac and cheese, collards, beans and cornbread are four beige-to-brown masses with no structure to light.
spread plates · stacked height · crisp textures
Spanish
Almost every listing on a Spanish menu is the same food at a different size. The platforms size every dish to the same fraction of the frame, which erases the only thing separating a tapa from a ración.
multiple pieces · spread plates · tall vessels
Thai
Green curry, red curry, yellow curry. On a Thai menu the colour is the product name, which makes colour accuracy a labelling question rather than an aesthetic one.
liquid bowls · spread plates
Turkish
Eight kebabs leave a Turkish kitchen on eight copies of the same plate — rice, pepper, tomato, onion, lavash. The one thing that changes between listings is the smallest object in the frame, and that is what a duplicates rejection is made of.
wrapped cylinders · spread plates · crisp textures
Vietnamese
Pho does not arrive assembled. The herbs, sprouts, lime and sauces travel in separate containers — so the iconic photograph of a finished bowl is a picture of something the customer has to build.
liquid bowls · stacked height · tall vessels