Restaurant Photography in Milan: Shooting Schedule, App Specs and Menu Rules

Use Milan's daylight as your shooting calendar

Around the June solstice Milan gets about 15 h 29 min of daylight and the noon sun reaches about 68 degrees above the horizon. Around the December solstice it gets about 8 h 31 min and the noon sun reaches about 21 degrees. That difference matters: in summer the sun is high and harsh at midday, while in winter it stays low and rakes across the room for most of the day.

A low sun is a side light. It skims a plate, throws long shadows from cutlery and can put a hard edge across a bowl of risotto or a slice of panettone. A high summer sun through a window drops steep light on the table, which flattens the top of a dish and leaves the front in shadow.

Work with the angle, not against it. The simplest fix is a white foam board or a sheet of white card placed opposite the window to bounce light back into the shadow side of the plate. Keep the camera between the bounce card and the window.

• April to August: shoot early morning or after 17:00, when the sun is lower and softer. Avoid 11:00 to 15:00 window light unless you diffuse it with a sheer curtain or a diffusion panel.
• September to March: the low sun is your friend. Shoot between 10:00 and 14:00 with the window to the side of the dish, and use a bounce card on the opposite side.
• December and January: daylight is short, so book shoots between 10:00 and 14:00 and keep a tripod ready. A slow shutter with a steady tripod beats raising ISO and adding noise.
• Any month: turn off overhead ceiling lights when shooting by the window. Mixed color temperatures make white plates look yellow or blue and are hard to correct later.

Angles and framing for Milan dishes

The angle should follow the food. A tall dish, a stacked sandwich or a glass of gelato reads best at eye level, roughly 0 to 10 degrees above the table. A flat dish, a pizza or a plate of ossobuco with risotto reads best from about 45 degrees, which shows both the surface and the side of the food. A straight overhead shot at 90 degrees works for a full table spread or a flat-lay for Instagram, but it hides height, so save it for dishes with strong color and pattern on top.

Milan's food culture is widely known for aperitivo, risotto, panettone in winter and a strong espresso and pastry morning. Those dishes have different photographic needs. A risotto needs a shallow bowl and a 45-degree angle so the texture of the rice shows. A panettone slice needs side light to show the crumb and the candied fruit. An espresso needs a small cup, a low angle and a clean background so the crema reads.

Shoot each dish at 1:1 for Instagram and Google Business Profile, and at 16:9 or 3:2 for a website hero banner. Keep the food centered with a little breathing room so a square crop does not cut the rim of the plate.

Delivery app photo specs: what to check and where

Delivery apps in Italy set their own image requirements, and those requirements change. This site publishes spec pages for three apps operating in Italy: Deliveroo at /delivery-photo-specs/deliveroo/italy/, Just Eat at /delivery-photo-specs/just-eat/italy/ and Glovo at /delivery-photo-specs/glovo/italy/. Start there, then confirm the current pixel size and file type on the upload screen of the app you use, because the upload screen is the final authority.

Deliveroo does not accept AI-generated or altered images. For Deliveroo, shoot your own real photo of the dish and upload that file. Do not use a generated or heavily retouched image there, and do not treat any image as pre-approved by the platform.

For Just Eat and Glovo, check the spec page and the upload screen for the current requirements before you export. Whichever app you use, keep the food looking like what arrives in the bag: same portion, same garnish, same sauce level.

Google Business Profile, your website and print

Google Business Profile photos are seen by people deciding where to eat, often on a phone. Use a 1:1 crop of the signature dish as the cover and add a few wider shots of the room and the plate on a table. Keep the background simple: a plain wall, a wooden board or a clean tablecloth beats a cluttered pass.

For your website menu, export a 16:9 or 3:2 hero for the top of the page and 1:1 thumbnails for each dish listing. For a QR menu, keep files small enough to load quickly on mobile data, and use the same crop for every dish so the list looks consistent.

For print, use the highest resolution you have and check at 300 dpi at the final print size. A photo that looks sharp on a phone can fall apart on an A3 menu board. Keep a plain background so the printer does not have to deal with a busy pattern behind the food.

Allergens, accuracy and what a photo may not claim

Under EU Regulation 1169/2011, allergen information for the 14 regulated allergens must be available for food sold without packaging, and for distance selling, including delivery apps, the mandatory information must be available before the purchase is concluded. A photo never replaces that information. Keep the allergen details in the app listing, the menu and the website text.

A photo should not suggest ingredients the dish does not contain. If a dish is photographed with a garnish of pine nuts or a dusting of Parmesan, that ingredient must actually be in the dish as served, or the photo misleads the customer and creates a risk for someone with an allergy. Shoot the dish as it leaves the kitchen.

For Milan, menus are commonly written in Italian nationally. If you also publish in English for visitors, keep the allergen statement identical in both versions and check that the photo matches the description in each language.

Building a repeatable shoot for a Milan kitchen

Pick one window, one table and one background and use them for every shoot. Consistency makes a menu look deliberate and saves time on editing. Shoot five to eight dishes in a session, starting with the ones that are hardest to hold: cold dishes, salads and anything with gelato or whipped cream. Warm dishes and risotto should be plated last and shot within a couple of minutes.

Keep a small kit: a tripod, a white bounce card, a clean cloth, a spray bottle for refreshing herbs and a few plain plates in different sizes. Note the time of day and the window you used so the next shoot matches.

FoodPhoto takes a real photo of the restaurant's own dish and improves light, background and crop for the restaurant's own channels such as the website menu, Instagram, a QR menu and print, keeping the food as it is. Every photo comes as a kit of sizes, including a hero image, delivery-app sizes, Instagram formats and Google Business Profile. It cannot guarantee approval by any platform, and for Deliveroo you upload your own real photo.