click to enlarge - Screenshot
- Stonesoupalley on Instagram
Let us now praise
stonesoupalley, the anti-Instagram IG feed. The site, like many of us, is fed by Tim Elliott, chef/co-owner of
Zabby & Elf's Stone Soup in downtown Burlington.
On the Instagram page he started last month, Elliott presents a clear-eyed view of the restaurant world with a side-eyed glance of what stonesoupalley is not: food porn.
"It's beautiful and the food is amazing," Elliott said of the constant blast of food images on social media. "But I'm numb to it."
At stonesoupalley, you won't find a plate of pretty food that is unidentifiable without a hashtag hint (#itdontlooklikethatforlong). There are no shots of farm landscapes where cows and carrots live the sunshiny good life until they don't (#blessedtillyoueatus).
In his 30 posts for 77 followers (so far), Elliott lays out the raw, rough-and-tumble ingredients that pepper the life of a restaurant. His setting is the alley west of Stone Soup, where a cook uses a handful of snow to soothe a kitchen burn, and four pigeons feast on a piece of babka. Compost bins overflow with pumpkins and gourds that beautify the restaurant every fall and get dumped when their time is up. ("Happy thanksgiving everyone," reads the caption that accompanies that image.)
The green bench where an employee might face "the talk of doom" is pictured. Smokers and bicycles, back-alley staples, are immortalized by Elliott's iPhone. An action shot of Avery Rifkin, Elliott's business partner, shows the chef tracking the flight of a snowball he just unleashed.
Look out for snowballs, and other cool shots coming your way!
#nophotosofbrisketfromabove #flashfreefritatta #sideofgrit #fastballsnowball