picture of their food in front of so many
eyes. “You eat with your eyes,” says
Bucher. “Millennials get information in
a millisecond and it has to be eye-catching or they’re just not interested. A great
shot of the Washington Monument may
get a few likes, but grilled cheese coming
apart? ;at gets tons of hits.” ( 16,552
views in six days, to be precise.)
But does that translate into customers in seats? “;at's the billion-dollar
question,” Bucher says. “;ere’s no way of
knowing that.” (Full disclosure: Bethesda
Magazine hired Schuble to take photos
of Community dishes for Bethesda
Beat’s First Take column online.)
AT FIRST, CHEFS RESISTED the idea of
their guests taking pictures of food, says
José Andrés, whose restaurant empire PH
OT
O
BY
SK
IP
BROW
N
i
Justin Schuble
frames a shot of
the fried chicken
sandwich at
Owen's Ordinary.
IT’S 3 O’CLOCK ON A ;ursday afternoon at Community, an upscale diner
in Bethesda’s Woodmont Triangle. ;e
few customers at the bar pay little notice
to Justin Schuble, the 22-year-old confidently setting up his camera tripod in the
middle of the restaurant. ;en, a server
delivers an open-faced cheeseburger to
his table. Schuble assesses it briefly and
assembles it, flu;ng the dill pickles,
razor-thin onion slices, slab of hothouse
tomato and thicket of shredded lettuce.
He picks up the construct and holds it
at arm’s length just above eye-level, his
hand barely visible. With his other hand,
he grabs his Sony Alpha A6000 digital
camera, brings it to his face and snaps a
picture that more than a hundred thousand people could potentially see.
“I mastered holding up a sandwich
and getting the shot at the same time—
it gives the feel that I’m about to eat
something. I do some overhead shots,
but people get really excited about in-
the-hand, gooey, drippy photos,” says
Schuble, a Georgetown University
senior from Potomac.
He’s the founder of Instagram ac-
count DCFoodPorn, which has 114,000
followers and counting. A picture of
bacon-wrapped jalapeños and duck
nachos at Bethesda’s Gringos &
Mariachis garnered more than 2,024
likes, and a post showing the chocolate-
drizzled churros at TapaBar on Fairmont
Avenue received 177-plus comments.
Schuble is known as an Instagram
influencer. Restaurateurs like Mark
Bucher, a Community co-owner, are
thrilled by the idea of having a tantalizing
