Anyone who can’t resist sneaking in an email at lunch or scrolling Instagram during dinner is not going to like chef Gaggan Anand. “I will not allow photos. I will not allow a camera. I will not allow phones. It’s not that you will not be able to use the phones. It’s that you cannot,” says chef Gaggan Anand rather matter-of-factly on call from Thailand.
Something’s cooking at his eponymous restaurant in Bangkok, and it’s not off the emoji-led menu. In an exclusive chat with The Nod, the chef, who’s restaurant has been adjudged The Best Restaurant in Asia five times, lets us in on what’s changing before they reopen on May 29.
It seems there’s a lot on the plate, but sorry, you can’t capture it for posterity.
Renowned for its multisensory, immersive-led culinary odyssey (think: edible Broadway), Gaggan—adjudged Asia’s Best Restaurant five times—is strictly not your average go-to outpost. At this chef’s table, every dish is an optical illusion, designed to bend logic. The eyes and tongue will have different stories to tell. Diners go in expecting the unexpected. The only rule: there are no rules. Well…until now.
On January 1, the chef sent the internet in a tizzy with his Instagram post—partly with his comeback announcement and partly with the ‘no-phone policy’ at his restaurant. “…so the hard work put into creating the surprise is not ruined. So we can disconnect and connect at the same time. So that our art reflects at its best. So that we live the moment, so we can make memories…,” he said.
For context, the restaurant famously served a dish resembling a rat brain, backed by a dramatic narration on its capture. The diners are not made aware of the dish’s reality until the end of the meal. But alas, social media played spoiler. The mystery around the dish couldn’t be kept under wraps anymore, killing the curiosity of it all. “People came to my restaurant and asked ‘When the brain was coming?’ This geeky, nerdy “influencer” show-off ensured I become a punk.”
You eat with your camera eyes
The chef is not the first to encourage his diners to disconnect. The iconic 100-year-old sushi chef, Jiro Ono’s Michelin star eatery in Tokyo, doesn’t allow photography.
Sure, staring at our smartphones is a significant part of modern life today, but is banning what is perhaps the most obnoxious dining etiquette today our only solution? “It’s because of all the influencer crowd. They came to my restaurant just to take photos. They were not interested in understanding the idea of the dish. Our restaurant is a theatre and in [the middle of] theatrical performances, people get busy taking videos. Imagine, your one hand is already busy: how will you eat? And I think every chef is complaining about this problem. The ice cream is melting, the garnish is falling apart, but the diner keeps touching the plate and trying to move it for the best angle, the photo, and then flashing. I thought, let’s not. At least for one restaurant, let’s put your foot down,” he says of his no-phone rule.
His stance comes at an opportune moment. After years of digital overload, 2026 seems to have ushered in the offline era, with people being tired of posting and ghosting algorithms for analogue everything. But the chef is not convinced. For him, the influencer influx has brought with it unwanted frenzy, and caused some collateral damage. Blurring the lines between drama and dishes, he’d rather you did not know what’s on your plate. He elucidates this by referring to murder mysteries: no one wants to know if the butler or the billionaire was the killer before the plot even has a chance to unfold. “There are a lot of spoilers. You not only ruin the romance of being in a restaurant, you’re also ruining others’ dining experience,” he adds.
