The Random Restaurant Twitter feed shows that mini chip fryer baskets and terrible food photos are a planet-wide phenomenon

It’s a familiar image. There’s a well-stacked burger: domed bun, a couple of patties, the crimson flash of fresh tomato. It’s not unappetising. Next to it, however, is an emblem for all that is naff, irritating and deathly in the restaurant world: a mini chip fryer basket full of chips. Because what could be more fun than a miniaturised version of a piece of kitchen equipment? It’s exactly the kind of thing you’d expect to find in a dreary low-rent British gastropub; one that has decided crass serving items are a substitute for a commitment to good food.

Except this image is not from a clumsy gastro pub. It’s certainly not from Britain. It’s from Fast Food Le Jasmin, a restaurant in Guelma, in north-eastern Algeria. I can show you other examples from Costa Rica and French Polynesia. For the joyous revelation that restaurant stupidity is not restricted to the UK, we must thank a Twitter account called Random Restaurant or @_restaurant_bot, created by one Joe Schoech. As its name suggests, it uses a bot to search Google randomly for information on restaurants all over the world. Around 20 times a day it posts a map link, plus the first four photographs it finds. Certain countries, including China, are excluded because Google isn’t available there. Otherwise, it provides an extraordinary window on how we eat out globally.