Social media has become a common place to find food reviews, pictures, online stores and anything else.
While from outside all we see is the glamour of posting online and getting to travel, what is the real deal of being behind the screen. Is it as fun and exciting as it looks or is there more than that?
For the scene of food blogging, a few years ago in Nepal not many people knew what it actually meant. And now social media is filled with pictures of various cuisines and reviews.
While talking to the man behind Nepal Food, one of the first food bloggers in Nepal, Siddhartha Ghimire recalling his first time getting a call from a restaurant says, “Back in the days when I had started as a blogger, a restaurant called me and asked if I could come by. When I did reach there, they thought I was a food photographer and I would just click pictures and leave.”
He said remembering the time I cannot help but laugh!
Things are a lot different now, people know how food blogging works and the people behind it.
So are the reviews as authentic as they used to be? Gaining popularity with the people on social media also means getting attention from different restaurants.
How to be authentic while you have gained so much popularity?
So when asked the same question, Ghimire says, “Surely I get a lot of calls and offers from a lot of different restaurants but I don’t go to all of them. I do what I do because I love food and travelling a lot. So I don’t just want to be true to my followers but to myself as well.”
Food blogging on the outside seems fun. Clicking pictures and posting reviews of how it was, does not seem as hard. But truly, it takes a lot of time and being consistent is a must.
As a student himself, Ghimire said, it is such a time consuming thing to do, travelling, and managing time is a hassle.
People look up to food bloggers for the restaurants to visit, and if one does not get satisfied, they will feel that the reviews are not authentic, then it is a problem.
Ghimire talks about facing some online bullies after gaining popularity and says how he has to ignore them for his own sake.
So, are glamour and travelling the only things that come with being a food blogger?
