Nowadays, food plating is basic principle but at the same time it is quite important to chefs who want to convey their spirits. The presentation is also significant to diners since it is first impression they receive before eating. There are many positive changes in the way we ate. However, why is plating playing an important role in the culinary industry? Why does it turn into centre of our dinning experience?
With the growth of economy, people are richer than the past generations and pursue high quality lifestyles. They would like to obtain a multi-sensory eating experience. Besides, social media such as instagram has been brought into full play in culinary industry. People prefer to show beautiful and unique images and it results in innovation of staging food. Therefore, food presentation stopped playing a merely minor role. Actually, food always come out with containers such as bowls, plates and saucers in our daily lives and it is a kind of presentation. However, the presentation should not focus on how expensive the containers are. The more important is what chefs' concept and knowledge of ingredients are.
Cultural historians always surround the presentation of food and such manifestation led customers to understand the chefs' background and thought process of using certain ingredients. A chef’s own culture is quite vital because it assists them to create a good eating experience for diners. As we seen from Japanese plating, the cuisine has delivered their attitude of dealing with ingredients and brought a huge influence on the current gastronomy. In the 18th century, haute cuisine was created in French cuisine. Chef Antonin Careme combined concepts of culinary and construction and opened up a new horizon. He piled up ingredients and bestowed food presentation more possibilities. Chef Fernand Point created another idea of plating, Nouvelle cuisine during the 20th century. He selected seasonal ingredients and staged it with graceful and plain style on the plate. Chef Point tried to focus on ingredients and wanted people to experience the nature of food. In today's food industry, information exchange is indispensable because chefs could gain inspirations between individuals. In the year 1960, French culinary school opened in Japan and it also gave another life of plating, called plate dressing.
With the advancement of science and technology, molecular gastronomy was point by physicist Nicholas Kurti and physical chemist Herve This. It is a culinary breakthrough and totally overthrows our existing concept of a dish. Of course, molecular cuisine is a new and innovative dinning experience. Such cooking style involves many techniques including cookery and technology; therefore, it became a more complex and hot topic. Molecular gastronomy also attracts chefs and people to taste how unique it is. However, some chefs don't like and can't accept this creation since it doesn't taste better than usual and ignore the characteristics of ingredients. They care that their dishes should be absolutely delicious and give diners healthy and natural cooking style. As a result, such innovation has passed.
Puffballism's channel. (2012, June 24). Molecular gastronomy:Fruit Spaghetti.[Vide file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FX4JD7BAOrU
Currently, people tend to eat healthily and plainly, as a result, food presentation turns out to be the sensory qualities of the food itself. Chef Martyn Meid, is another star of the food industry and opened a new restaurant in London. His concept is fresh and simple ingredients for everyone with using traditional techniques. I totally agree with his idea and was attracted by the photographs of food since they looked so colourful, beautiful and special. However, I am a little bit confused from such food plating. How can diners be full from such a small portion? Most ingredients seems as decoration such as orchid and lotus leaves. There is no doubt that plating the food is a key to communicate chefs' creativeness and inventiveness and it also delivers the memory, experience and expectations to diners; however, a good dinning experience should contain a satisfied appetite and vision although dinning experience determined by aspect of food presentation is very common.
Squid dish. Adapted from tofo.me/inkrestaurant by Martyn Meid, 2015. Retrieved from http://tofo.me/inkrestaurant
One the best things in life is the enjoyment of delectable food with visual feast. Being a chef student, I experience how many different creations are between individuals when I study in the cooking Lab. I also learn how to us the characteristics of food to create tasty dishes. I think a successful chef can seen himself/ herself as a artist and creates many works with amply using the feature of ingredients as much as he/ her likes. I hope someday I could convey my idea to diners in the presentation and texture of food.
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