The Art of Plating

Company is coming and you want your guests to enjoy a memorable meal. You’ve taken care to select the finest food and painstakingly prepare it to perfection. You’ve set the table with your finest linens, your best silver and crystal, and a beautiful centerpiece of fresh flowers. Your guests compliment your stunning table, but when you dish out the meal and set it in front of them, do you hear a chorus of oohs and aahs?

If your meals are greeted with the sound of silence, perhaps it’s time for a lesson in art—the art of plating. As with so much else in life, when it comes to food, presentation counts. Take it from Chef Christopher Styler, a restaurant consultant, recipe developer, and cookbook author who insists that nothing is as rewarding to a chef as the moment when the plate is set down. “That’s the thrill of it all,” he says.

A beautiful plate is “a tremendously satisfying thing,” says Styler. Why? Because appreciation of food involves all the senses. “Eating certainly involves smell, it involves touch in the sense of texture—what everything fees like in your mouth—and, of course, taste. But the way you experience food first is through sight,” he explains.

When you eat at a restaurant where plating is taken very seriously, says Styler, “There’s a sort of hushed silence for a minute when everyone is looking at everyone else’s plate.” Invariably, someone says, “‘This is so beautiful I can’t touch it.’ Of course, five seconds later, they’re digging in.” The visual appeal of a plate is an expression of a chef’s personality, like a signature in food.

But aesthetics aren’t the only reason to give presentation as much attention as you lavish on cooking and table decoration. When you’re trying to eat healthfully, proper plating helps with portion control, particularly when it comes to limiting those foods that should be consumed in moderation. “You can get away with a lot with a smaller portion if the plate is beautifully dressed,” notes Styler.

If the idea of artfully plating food intimidates you, you’re not alone. Styler’s advice? Get over yourself. You don’t need to be an artist to create an artful plate. All you need is a playful spirit and the knowledge of a few basic principles of plate design, which he shares in his inspiring guide Working the Plate: The Art of Food Presentation. He profiles the trendsetting work of 10 chefs and looks at each of the major plating styles popular today, from minimalist to dramatic. Each plating technique is described step by step, not only by text but also by beautiful photographs by David Lazarus.

Featured recipes let you reproduce the dishes and try your hand at the techniques. But there’s no need to strive to duplicate the masterpieces created by some of the country’s best chefs. You don’t have access to the staff, tools, or equipment that let chefs create a pièce de rèsistance, says Styler. But you can give your dishes more eye appeal. Just explore, he adds. “Take the same set of ingredients and arrange them in several ways and determine which looks better.” That’s exactly what chefs do when they’re developing new dishes and are at the final stage of cooking presentation. “They’ll stack things on top of each other, grab six differently shaped plates, put the sauce first on the bottom, and then in a ribbon. They’ll take that same set of ingredients and play until the presentation appeals to them.”

Remember, Styler says, that more is less when it comes to dressing a plate. Huge portions and towering food skyscrapers are styles that have come and, thankfully, gone. “You don’t have to overreach because it’s simple,” he says. “What makes a good looking plate is variation in height, color, and texture.”

Resist the temptation to load the plate, he adds. “If all the ingredients are carefully arranged on half of the plate, all the white space helps draw your eye toward what is on the plate.” And when he says white space, he means it, noting that most chefs like to plate on white to let the food shine without being overshadowed by China colors and patterns.

Artful presentation, insists Styler, is just one more thing to love about entertaining. “If you get a kick out of cooking, you probably get a kick out of shopping for the best ingredients. If you start to pay attention to the plating aspect of the process, it’s another source of enjoyment.” Just explore, he says. So roll up your sleeves and—contrary to what your mother may have told you—play with your food.

— Kate Jackson