At Dishtag, we celebrate the passion for food and photography and our foodie community. This week we delved into the foodie life of @cheukeatout, also known as CEO :-), former food journalist who then decide to turn his job into a personal blog to document his foodie journey. One of the highlights of his IG profile is that he has created special hashtags to categorise his journey into different cuisines, check out his collection of Chinese dishes and Japanese dishes.
Tell us more about you. What do you do?
This is CheukEatOut, you could call me Cheuk (Sometimes my IG friends or other foodies love to call me CEO).I am currently working at an international digital company as lifestyle and commerce content lead. Although I used to be a food journalist, so I really enjoy doing in-depth ingredient features, chef interviews, and dig out interesting stories behind restaurants and their dishes.
How did you become a food blogger?
About 4 years ago I though, “why not keep track of my exciting and indulgent food experiences?”. I treated this account as a food diary to record my gourmet footprint at the beginning. Then I noticed more and more followers engaging in my content so I started to share my points of view for each dish and restaurant, as they seemed to wanting to know.
When it comes to eating, do you prefer to discover new restaurants or go back to your favourite spot?
Why not both? I think that every foodie loves to discover the latest dining destination and try them out, but if I am to make a quick decision on the fly with my hungry friends, I will definitely think of one of the restaurants on my “secret list”.
Tell us 3 food photography tips that are essential for taking good photos
I am not a professional photographer, so what I can share is based on my experience:
1. Lighting: Natural light is always the best. Try to find a table with a source of natural light when you are dining during the daytime. If you are dining at a restaurant that lacks lighting and you don’t have an LED light, you could try to adjust the brightness of a mobile phone’s display screen to 100% and use it as a light source. This allows you to create a nice soft light without disturbing other diners!
2. Timing
There is no certainty, only opportunity for taking great photos. Capture the moment in the twinkle of an eye. Sometimes, the photo may turn out to even more brilliant than a perfectly set-up photo.
3. Feeling
Snapshots will surprise you occasionally. Just pick up your mobile or camera to shoot it when you have a feeling.
What are your top 3 restaurants in Hong Kong?
At the moment, It’s hard to answer what are my top 3, because there are many types of cuisines in HK, so I think you might need to clearly articulate the category and criteria first. But if you are asking what are my 3 favourite restaurants, here you are:
1. Roganic
3. Zuicho
Tell us one thing you like and one thing you don’t like when using the Dishtag app.
I really enjoy that I can discover a lot of new restaurants on the wall of “restaurant feed” and I like having the restaurant menu with images. However, I would prefer to see more than 3 filters on the search bar: hot, new and near, so that I can filter and search for new restaurants by location.
Is there any features you would like us to add to the Dishtag app？
I’d like to be able to find friends via mobile or search by social media contact list, and also to be able to search for restaurants by location.
Which three restaurants are on your to-go or to-try list?
