One of the country’s three-star Michelin restaurants has erected a sign telling diners not to photograph their food.

The first instinct of many restaurant-goers when their meal arrives is not to eat it, but to take a mobile phone picture and upload it to Instagram.

At the Waterside Inn in Bray, Berkshire, where the six-course tasting menu costs £167.50 without drinks, the practice has been outlawed.

“I’m really getting so upset about people taking pictures. We put up a card at the door - ‘No photos, please,’” said Michel Roux, who founded the restaurant with his brother, Albert.

“What are they doing? Maybe once during the meal you want to take a little photo of something because it’s unusual. But what about the flavours?” he told the Daily Mail.

“A picture on a phone cannot possibly capture the flavours.”

The restaurant is now run by Roux’s son, Alain. Albert’s son, Michel Roux Jr, is chef-patron at the family’s other temple to fine dining, Le Gavroche, and is more relaxed about customers photographing the food.

He said last year: “If someone’s phone goes off, we look at them as if to say, ‘Switch that off or it goes in the ice bucket.’” But he added: “I don’t mind people taking pictures. I’ve been known to do it myself.”