Restaurant plates have never looked more lovely. But do they have to be so complicated? The Guardian’s restaurant critic considers five modern masterpieces, from the Ledbury and Sat Bains, to Hedone and the Sportsman
It was Noma that started it. When Copenhagen’s two Michelin star restaurant first launched its now legendary signature dish – vintage carrots with camomile – in the Noughties, a generation of chefs gasped in awe and reached for their tweezers. Suddenly, vegetables everywhere were to be lightly pickled and teased into decorative little tubes of myriad colours, tottering down a specially designed plate in a wave of exquisiteness.
But they were still just vegetables, right? Did the intricate and painstaking presentation make them taste any better? Apparently so: a research team at Oxford University found last year that a salad plated up to resemble a Kandinsky painting was judged by human guinea pigs to be more delicious than exactly the same ingredients delivered any old how. Beauty, as ever, matters.
If a plate of food looks good, it can taste better
Continue reading...