It's very pretty, but if there's sauce to go on the food, I want _sauce_, not dots. BIL refers to it as "drawing with the sauce".

Dots are pretty but there also better be a pool of the stuff under the meat!

I never use dots on plates when I am serving food, but I have saved squeeze bottles so that I can make drizzles and squiggles. Most of what I serve on plates is not that photogenic, but I am concerned with taste instead of looks. As a child, I used to make cakes with polka dot icing, and so I think of the dots as somewhat childish. At least dots appealed to me more when I was a child, and they do not impress me now.

What bothers (bothered) me most was the trend of stacking everything on the plate to get height. I do not want meat on top of potatoes or anything else (including sauce) - I want the vegetables to be separate, and even in a separate dish, if possible, and sauce on the side. I don't even go to restaurants that much any more, partly because I do not like the presentations. In fact, I prefer cafeterias. In Brazil, there were a lot of restaurants/cafeterias that sold food by the pound, and there is one in Culver City now also, which I like. Oddly enough, it was the first place we went when we got back from Brazil. We tried to go to the sushi restaurant next door to it, but it was closed at that time of day, and so we ended up having Brazilian food yet again. A lot of the food we had in Brazil was served family style, which is not something I do at home, but I do like it at restaurants. I don't remember seeing dots on plates in Italy either, and so it must be an Anglo/Franco thing that unfortunately has become popular in the U.S. and possibly Canada. Dot may be more popular in certain cuisines and not in others.

Until recently, I thought those dots and swooshes were just decorations, not an essential flavor ingredient. Maybe it's for OCD types - one bite, one dot, one bite, one dot. It could keep you focused throughout a whole meal for one.

I'll take dots over the smears that were so popular for a while. There's nothing more unappetizing to me that a smear of something that looks like I would be cleaning it off my shoe - even if it IS truffle pate or chocolate. Yuk!

I don't think it's even very pretty. Just kind of pedestrian. What I like to see is beautiful vegetable color on a plate....that is the kind of thing I find exciting.

I hate dots. First of all, trying to get them on the food is hard! Then, tasting it is hard. Smears look bad, but at least they're not so hard to eat. I don't want pointilism in my food, nor abstract expressionism. If it looks like paint, it doesn't look appetizing to me.

Yes, you eat with your eyes first, as the saying goes, but food that looks like food is far more appetizing than food that looks "interesting". I also think I'd enjoy the food more if I didn't think some poor cook was wasting his talents making perfect circles of exactly that which is bringing down the plate!

While I respect a trained chef's need and desire to always be creative, artwork should hang on the wall and not decorate your meal. A true chef's talent is in the taste. A great meal can be eaten while blindfolded and still taste the same.

food that looks like food is far more appetizing than food that looks "interesting".

I wish that came up on instagram whenever anyone starts to post food pics.

Pretty spot on and all in good fun. Julia nailed it...I shudder at too much food handling.

Nature and its bounty is gorgeous. I like it fresh and cooked the various ways to make it taste its best. Stacked, leaning, does not bother me unless showing off. Or things don't go together. We stack all day long...egg on toast, tacos, burgers, BLT.

I did some dots. I laugh every time I run across those pics. A couple times I 'polkey'-dotted. But I used them to let friends test the two sauces, spicy and mild.

Here in NYC there is a big annual Washington Square outdoor art exhibition. Lots and lots of artists show off their work.

I visit that art show once in a while. It is rather entertaining that 98% of the so call artists should be ashamed that they think they have some talent in art.

However, there is that 2% that makes the going not a waste of time.

Likewise, most good cooks are seldom good plating artists, and good plating artists may not be good cooks.

When one good artistic chef does something amazing, every other chef immediately creates bad copies.

Dot's my theory.

dcarch.

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I like your theory. :) It makes sense. But I do think that the food to the paying diner should be plated to look appetizing, not artistic at the expense of eatability.

I was just thinking about one of Dcarch's creations after I first looked at this thread. It was square, abstract, and had peeled green tomatoes on it. While it was pretty darned good as a visual art composition, the food also looked appealing and appetizing to me. Like a mickey mouse pancake can still look like a yummy pancake, that tomato creation had a huge art thing going on, but ignoring that, I still wanted to eat it. And while perhaps unusual as plating, it did look like good food. Not paint.

Then there's the story of the rich man who insisted on eating his housekeeper's dinner of cassoulet because it smelled so good. :)

Yes, just no to dots.

I only see them at one of the local sushi places, but since I'm not really fond of the pink mayo to begin with, I just ignore them.

Don't mind the odd dot as long as the dish tastes good. Don't do them myself .

I LOVE the article. We eat out often and those dots and dashes get old very, very fast.

Hope the OP doesn't mind, I posted the NPR link to Chowhound and Hungry Onion forums. It'll be interesting to see what the foodie communities say!

But...a well placed drizzle. In the thread about cutting sopapilla cheesecake into Christmas tree shapes, someone suggested using the planned raspberry sauce as a squiggle of garland on the tree. Not only would that be cute, but it puts the sauce on the cake, where it's wanted! It's just that so many of these plated dots are not well placed for the eating and do not contribute to the dish in any palpable way.

Reading Ripert's description made me think of the poor diners in the multiple star restaurant wanting to pick up their plates and lick them. ;) Wouldn't that have been a sight!

So if you spent $1K eating at Grant Achatz's Alinea/Chicago, do you have to lick the table to finish dessert?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qofsdSMuGbg

Like Lars, my big "turn off" was the practice of stacking everything on a plate, the potatoes on top of the vegetables and under the meat, with sauce over everything. Give me my food separately in most instances. Sandwiches are an exception (although I generally remove the top slice of bread and discard it, there's always too much bread). I don't put my egg on top of my toast, if the yolk is runny I cut the toast into "fingers" and dunk them, a practice that has held on from my childhood. Tacos are just another sandwich, IMO, so there's that.

I also would prefer to see the beautiful and natural shapes and colors of real food than some cobbled up tiny version with a couple of dots of stuff. As has been mentioned, it's one of the reasons I seldom go out to eat. Dots and smears do not contribute to the experience for me. I am offended when I pay $50 for two ounces of fish accompanied by three dots and a smear. Because I can usually cook something similar at home anyway, I feel like I've driven 100 miles and paid $50 for someone to wash my plate and that detracts from my enjoyment, somehow. Ahem.

Annie

OMG!!!! Jakkom, how did you find that??? I might sit still for it if you paid me the grand!

Pardon us while our "waiters" get in the middle of your dinner conversation to splatter your table with purposefully arranged garbage then set it on fire.

FOOD FIGHT!! -- MOMMY!!! Don't throw your microbasil at Daddy if it's been in the blueberry goop! Daddy, those little white poo balls hurt! Stop! Stop! The shattered frozen blueberry foam insulation is sharp!

JOHNNY! Don't lick the table!

I've seen the Alinea video before and agree it's ludicrous. If I'm paying that much for a meal you can give me a damn plate. No way am I eating it off the table.

We had a family dinner last night at a place that is a curious mixture of "fine dining" and "upmarket casual". My MIL had a 4 oz steak that was not even as wide as the rim of the giant plate it arrived on. For the steak only, no sauce, no vegetables-$32. At that price, nearly $300/kg. Ridiculous.

After reading the comments, I wasn't going to watch the video jakkom posted... but I did. wow. I can't believe that place stays in business!!!

I only once had dinner (group of friends) at one of those places where it cost $50 for a *tiny* stacked pile of something with sticks and branches coming out of it. I remember the waiter coming to the table to ask if we'd like some olives as an appetizer -- yes, of course! -- and he proceeded to place two olives on each of our appetizer plates. All that money and I left HUNGRY!!!

PM, there's a "tapas" place in Grand Rapids, several of the forum members went there when we got together once. In excess of $50 and we each got a bite of "something". We stopped and ate on the way home, because 8 or 10 bites just wasn't enough to constitute a meal, especially for Elery.

Annie

Glad some folks enjoyed the video. Colleenoz, I did in fact first see that video when it was posted in the old GW Cooking forum, way back when. Never forgot it, and occasionally dredge it up (ain't Google wonderful, LOL?) to show to people. It's such a pretentious hoot!

I'm not in love with Modernist cuisine, although some of the techniques can be useful. You are all probably aware that Parmesan is a difficult cheese to melt "smoothly". We were at an upscale Wine Country restaurant and the fresh tomato bisque had a Parmesan 'foam' on top that you stirred in.

Unlike the coarse-bubbled foams that never taste like anything, this was a creamy, fine-textured foam. It evenly dispersed the sharp, distinctive flavor of fine Parmesan-Reggiano without ruining the smooth texture of the soup or overwhelming the tomatoes' sweetness.

A brilliant touch, and delicious. No cream needed so the flavors were pure and fresh.

Jakkom, I would have enjoyed that foam. But I notice it's parm in tomato soup. I.e., a classic pairing of umami rich, homey foods, made lovelier by fancy techniques. Not "entertainment" which is what that "dessert" obviously was. When they were doing the graduated dots, my mind went to Nepalese monks doing sand paintings. Mesmerizing to watch, and ephemeral, but the monks don't make you lick their work. But while the dots, and even the piles of sand, were at least artistic, when they shattered the foam bricks then ever so carefully tweezered on single shards of frozen blueberry goop per person, it went from somewhat revolting but artistically entertaining and mind-expanding drivel, to--I swear this was what was going through my head as it happened in the video--"Somebody should tell the emperor his wee willy is winking!" It went from puerile "art" to a garbage heap that looked like the aftermath of the food fight. Whereas the foam on your soup sounds like it was the right technique to produce a desirable result. And if you just want melty parm without having to make a perfect silky foam, add a little calcium sterate. :)

I don't mind small portions at restaurants when the point is to eat many different little things--and the patrons are forewarned at the quantity and price that a full meal will be. Tapas are generally 3-5 plates per person, in my experience, for a full meal, and a group of six might share round 2-3 dozen dishes and have a bite or two from each. They must be priced, however, as several for the price of a full meal at a competitively ranked restaurant, and if that's high enough to pay for the extra labor that tapas usually require, the quality had better be fine dining worthy. Tapas are really meant to be bar food, and often are just presented as this is what just came out of the kitchen, do you want it, rather than made to order, which probably also keeps the labor cost down. You should never have to stop for burgers on the way home from fine dining, no matter how entertaining it is!

I wouldn't go to Alinea for dinner every night. but it would be interesting to experience the theatrics a couple of times.

If a restaurant serves you fish uncooked, more or less unseasoned, just carefully sliced, in other words, sushi style, would you pay $500 to a $1,000 per person?

Try MASA in NYC.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RyLXLFaspj0

dcarch

There is just no way I could ever justify $1,000 for a single meal, no matter the theatrics. While I could write a check for that amount and hand it to the local homeless shelter or food pantry, I can't in good conscience spend an amount equivalent to hundreds of meals. I've been in some circumstances where I did not know when or what my next meal might be and I just can't get past that.

I did watch the Alinea video and that is the most ridiculous thing I've ever seen. I'm embarrassed that it could happen here in the Midwest, where we're supposed to be practical, geez.

Annie

Aarrgghh is all I can say.

My issue, apart from the horrific waste (as I see it) of money, is that I sincerely doubt my ability to distinguish between a $100 meal and a $1000 enough to perceive the $1000 meal as 10 times better. Even if I had millions at my disposal, I'd be more inclined to donate it to charity rather than eat such wasteful meals or buy a Lamborghini etc.

https://mymodernmet.com/math-cake-dinara-kasko/

Christine, we also have the "pie version". Actually those look pretty cool....

https://mymodernmet.com/creative-pies-lauren-ko/

Annie

The cakes and pies are cool. And they have plates and no sauce dots :-)

Sometimes silly ideas sprout in my head.

Is this pollock tastefully done?

dcarch

I love the math cakes! And the pies are great, though I wish more were shown post-baking. The important words about Kasko were "each one will still taste like the delightful desserts you know and love" and Ko "tasty". While they're visually out there, the cakes are no more or less sculptural than the fish shaped Father's Day cake lovingly smushed together by the kids, and the pies are in essence decorated like the ones that use cookie cutters to make leaf shapes for the top crust rather than a flat rolled round. They're gorgeous, but they look like cake (especially in cross section) and pie. And appetizing. And, as Colleen said, on plates without dots.

Dcarch, your bean sprout caricature is the best reason I've ever seen for doodling with sauce lines on a plate. That's cute! And while the sauce doesn't look any easier to incorporate with the sprouts, if it's just decor, well, it's decorative! The Pollock is clever, and works as a satire on the dots and lines we've been denouncing, and on Pollock himself, and at least gets some of the sauce on the food!