A belated introduction to plate design

I thought that it may be a good idea to take a minute to talk about the powers that be behind putting together a good plate. According to my FFP lecture there are five areas that you have to take into account, and I feel like these pretty much cover the bases of it myself.


First up to bat is color. This one is pretty obvious, and I would imagine would be one of the first things that someone off the street would mention if they were asked what goes into a fancified plate. Having a variety of colors on the plate does more than look good (go ahead, imagine a plate of poached fish, mashed potatoes, and cauliflower... pretty nasty, yeah?), it's a good indicator that you're getting a variety of nutrients, too. Set that albino plate next to something else, say, seared pork rib chop (with a nice pan sauce, of course) with mashed sweet potatoes and haricot verts. You've got a rather nice orange, a vibrant green, and a kind of pinky browny porkish color. Overall a nice variety.

Next up is texture. No one wants to look down and see a plate full of mush. It's boring, and in the case of "mush" particularly disturbing. Salmon tartar, creamed cauliflower, and carrot puree might offer a range of colors on a plate, but it all has the same sort of mouthfeel. It's all more or less a smooth puree. Take that same tartar and pair it with some good pommes frites (light and fluffy inside, wonderfully crispy skin) and a small bed of nice crunchy greens and you've got yourself a winner.

Shape is our next consideration. Some good meatballs beside whole roasted red potatoes and creamed pearl onions would go quite well together, I think, in terms of flavor, but you've just got one huge pile of circles. Why not stir things up a bit. All it takes is reforming the meat into another shape (ground beef is pretty easy to work with in that respect), and cutting up the potatoes pre-roast. Now you have a bit of variety on the plate.

Height is another fun thing to play with. Sure you can just throw everything onto the plate and send it out, but what's the fun in that? There are plenty of ways to give something a bit of height. Items can be stacked into one central tower, or gently laid over one another for a more supple approach, or even topped with an extra little garnish to add that extra oomph.

And speaking of garnish, we come to our final item of note. A good garnish doesn't need to be some hugely elaborate piece of whatever that takes up half of the plate. Food can look good enough on its own without adding anything else. Those clean grill marks? That bone sticking up above the rest of the plate? That is the garnish, and boy does it look good. Not that I'm going to say to never add anything. Just don't go overboard. As a rule a garnish should be edible, and furthermore something that works with the rest of the plate flavorwise (usually something already used in the dish). Of course, grill marks are also cheaper than adding another item to the plate, which is especially nice if you're serving 400 people for lunch.

It's said that people eat with their eyes first. If you really want to get down to it, I'd wager that at least sometimes it's smell that wins that race... but that's getting picky. The point is that taste actually comes fairly late to the game. The plate has to capture the attention before the fork is even in hand. If something looks bad, it's just not going to have the same effect (even if it does taste great).

Sure you may not dress up everything that you eat, but it can be fun to do it sometimes. And at least knowing more about it helps you to appreciate the time and effort that goes into designing all of those plates that you see coming out of the kitchen.