I opened a new Hoppers outlet last month. New dishes, new room, a familiar mix of excitement and mild terror paired with the hope that people will like the food. On the opening night, I posted a photo of our crab kari omelette, a dish I’m particularly proud of. Within minutes, I received a message: “Share recipe.”
No please, no maybe. Just, share recipe. A sentence that somehow served as both, a compliment and a demand. As if my role, at that moment, was less than a chef or a restaurateur and more of a content-vending machine.
That small exchange sums up something bigger I’ve been circling for a while. Entitlement created by social media. How the walls between kitchens and customers, creators and audiences, have come down. And how, like most big shifts, it cuts both ways.
There was a time when access to chefs, owners and kitchens was rare. You booked a table, you ate the food, you maybe caught a glimpse of the chef if they popped out at the end of service. Feedback happened quietly, if at all. If you really felt strongly, you wrote a letter on paper, with a stamp, and hoped it reached the right hands.
Now, the kitchen door is permanently ajar. The chef is in your pocket and the owner is one DM away. Instagram has turned into a customer service desk, a complaints department and, occasionally, a confessional.
I rarely block people who disagree with me. I don’t mind being challenged. I don’t even mind a bit of bluntness. What I struggle with is impoliteness. That tone of ‘you owe me this’.
Some messages are harmless, but telling: “Send recipe” or “Why don’t you post more vegetarian?”. Others are stranger: “I can’t believe you charge for recipes” or “I don’t want to pay for another subscription, can you email me the recipe.”
When I put recipes behind a paywall, the backlash fascinates me. Not because people don’t want to pay. That’s fair. But because some seem offended by the idea that online content might have value. We’ve somehow decided that it should be free by default, even though we’d never ask an author to send us their books for free or journalists to email their articles because we liked the headline.
Creating good content takes time and effort. Testing recipes takes ingredients, teams, equipment, research, and a lot of trial and error. Add to that filming, editing, writing, posting and answering questions, alongside a day job and family life. Instagram may feel casual, but for many of us it’s work, and part of the job today. A one-minute reel can often take hours to film and days to direct and edit.
When I started Hoppers a decade ago, the job was simple in theory. Cook well, build a happy team, run a tight service and deliver genuine hospitality. Now there is an additional layer. Document it all, caption it, be upbeat, be on-trend and stay consistent. Algorithms favour frequency and silence is punished. If you don’t post, you disappear.
There is an incessant pressure in that. You can have a brilliant service and still feel faintly anxious because you didn’t film anything. You can be exhausted and still feel the need to show up smiling in stories. Instagram is no longer optional for many creative professionals. It’s marketing, PR and community rolled into one.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s not all gloom and, yes, being seen is a conscious decision we take. Social media has many benefits. Discoverability is democratised. Anyone can build something from their own kitchen table. Between YouTube deep dives and TikTok teasers, anyone can learn the basics of almost any cuisine. As someone who cares deeply about food culture, that excites me. The walls coming down have allowed more voices in. More regional stories, more creativity and a lot more accountability.
The tension, however, is boundaries. Visibility is mistaken for availability and generosity for obligation. Transparency doesn’t mean total access. Sharing doesn’t mean surrendering everything. Just because you can reach someone instantly doesn’t mean they owe you a response, a recipe or an explanation.
I don’t have a neat solution. The truth is, as someone with over half-a-million followers, I’m grateful for the access, the attention and the conversations. Social media has allowed me to build restaurants and share ideas I never could have a decade ago.
But like any shared table, it works best when everyone remembers there are other people sitting around it. And if you really want the recipe, try asking nicely. You’d be surprised!
Karan Gokani is a London-based chef and restaurateur who spends his time cooking, travelling and exploring what the world is eating. He loves the gym, biriyani and his frying pan. Not necessarily in that order.
Published – February 27, 2026 03:57 pm IST