Delhi Restaurant Photography: A Practical Guide for Delivery Apps, Menus and Social

Plan your shoots around Delhi's daylight

Delhi is not a city where one lighting setup works all year. Around the June solstice you get roughly 13 h 50 min of daylight and the noon sun sits about 85 degrees above the horizon, almost overhead. Around the December solstice daylight drops to about 10 h 10 min and the noon sun is only about 38 degrees high, which throws long, low light across the room.

In practice, shoot near a north-facing window and use a white foam board or a sheet of white card on the opposite side to bounce light back onto the dish. Keep the plate about 50 to 80 cm from the glass so the light wraps rather than hits. If direct sun lands on the food, diffuse it with a thin white curtain or a sheet of tracing paper taped to the frame.

Build two shooting habits for the year. From roughly March to September, when the sun is high, use mid-morning and late-afternoon windows and avoid the harsh band of light near midday. From October to February, when the sun stays low, the same window will give soft, even light for most of the day, but the light fades earlier, so schedule menu shoots before mid-afternoon.

• June: shade the window, shoot 9 to 11 am or after 4 pm
• December: the window is usable longer, but finish before the light drops
• Always check the plate for a hard shadow line before you press the shutter
• A phone on a small tripod at roughly 45 degrees gives a natural menu angle

What Zomato and Swiggy ask for

Zomato and Swiggy are the delivery platforms listed for India, and each has its own upload rules. This site has spec pages for both: the Zomato India page and the Swiggy India page, each covering the image requirements that platform publishes.

Read those pages before a shoot so you know the aspect ratio and minimum resolution you are aiming for, then check the upload screen in the partner app as well, because platforms can change the interface without notice. If a platform does not publish pixel specs, do not guess: upload a test image and see how the crop lands in the app.

Zomato does not accept AI-generated or altered images. For Zomato, shoot your own real photo of the dish and upload that file. Do not describe any image as Zomato-ready, and do not send a generated or heavily edited version to the platform.

Keep the veg and non-veg symbol honest

Under FSSAI rules in India, food carries the green vegetarian or brown non-vegetarian symbol, and the Food Safety and Standards (Labelling and Display) Regulations, 2020 add calorie-display duties for larger food service chains and e-commerce food businesses. A photo must not contradict the dish's veg or non-veg status.

That has direct consequences for styling. A paneer dish shot with a garnish that reads as meat, or a chicken dish plated on a green-marked menu card, creates confusion that a customer or an inspector can spot. Keep the symbol visible in the frame or add it in the layout step, and make sure the ingredients shown match what the kitchen actually serves.

If your outlet falls under the calorie-display duties, plan menu layouts that leave a clean strip for the symbol and the calorie line next to each photo. Shoot slightly wider than you need so the crop can accommodate that text without covering the food.

Shoot for Google Business Profile and your own menu

Google Business Profile is where many diners first see your food, and it rewards recent, real photos. Shoot a small set every few weeks rather than one big annual session: a hero shot of your best-known dish, a wide shot of the dining room in daylight, and a close shot of a thali or platter where the separate bowls are legible.

For printed and QR menus, shoot at 1:1 or 4:5 for grid layouts and 16:9 only for banner strips. Menus in India are commonly written in English and Hindi, so leave breathing room on the left or right of the frame for a two-line dish name in both scripts. A dish name in Devanagari is often longer than the English version, and a tight crop will force the designer to shrink the photo.

For Instagram, the same dish can be reshot vertically at 4:5 with more of the table in frame. Keep the background simple: a plain dark surface for kebabs and tandoori items, a lighter cloth for rice and curry bowls, so the food separates from the background.

• Refresh Google Business Profile photos seasonally, not once a year
• Leave a clear margin for bilingual dish names
• Match the background tone to the dish, dark for charred food, light for pale food
• Shoot a wide room shot in daylight to show the actual space

Delhi dishes that need specific handling

Delhi's food culture is widely known for Mughlai and Punjabi cooking, chaat, kebabs and parathas, and each of these behaves differently on camera. Butter chicken and dal makhani look flat under direct flash because the sauce surface reflects light; use side window light and a small white bounce on the shadow side so the texture of the gravy reads.

Chole bhature and other fried breads collapse and go glossy within minutes. Have the plate ready, shoot within two to three minutes of plating, and keep a spare puffed bhatura on hand for a second take. Kebabs and tandoori items benefit from a slightly lower camera angle, around 30 degrees, to show char and height.

Chaat and street-style plates are busy, so shoot from directly above at 90 degrees and arrange the components so each element is visible. Keep the garnish proportionate to what a customer actually receives; a photo that promises more than the kitchen delivers causes complaints on delivery orders.

A simple workflow for a small kitchen

Pick one window, one table and one background cloth. Shoot six to ten dishes in a single session, each at three angles: 90 degrees overhead, 45 degrees, and a low 30 degrees. That gives you enough coverage for delivery apps, your website, a QR menu and social without a second session.

For your own channels, FoodPhoto takes a real photo of your own dish and improves the light, background and crop for menus, delivery apps and social while keeping the food as it is, and every photo comes as a kit of sizes. Use it for your website menu, Instagram, Google Business Profile, QR menu and print. For Zomato, upload your own real photo directly to the platform.