I have data about online restaurant decisions and I can tell you specifically that brits do want to see those photos. Including at the highest end restaurants.
Online is different. While ordering take out I would quite like to see a genuine picture of the food, but take out places just use stock photos so that's useless.
We're talking about in-house menus given to diners.
> We're talking about in-house menus given to diners.
When given an in-house menu, now days I pull up Yelp on my phone and look at the pictures of food that people have posted. It leads to me ordering things that sound boring on the menu but that look really interesting!
It also helps solve the problem of different people's understanding of what a dish is. I've seen a dish with the same name served boiled at one restaurant and fried at another!
Yelp's interface around this isn't exactly the best (not an intended use at all!) but the usefulness is amazing.
FWIW I eat at at a very diverse set of restaurants, so I often never know what I am going to get.
