It was going to happen eventually. After years of free meals, fawning posts and fluorescent ring lights, restaurants are finally starting to turn on the monster they helped create. Like Frankenstein, hospitality built its influencer economy from scratch – feeding it, nurturing it, basking in the fame that followed – only to recoil when it grew too powerful to control.
The tipping point came last week at Borough Market, when a food vlogger was thrown out mid-review. In a video that’s since been widely shared, Gerry del Guercio, one half of the duo Bite Twice, is seen filming himself and his friend eating an apple and cinnamon crumble when a security guard interrupts to tell them to stop recording. Del Guercio looks bewildered. “Are we being kicked out of Borough Market?” he asks incredulously during the kerfuffle.
