Working The Plate: The Art of Food Presentation

by Christopher Styler

Feast your eyes.


Long awaited by professional chefs, this groundbreaking guide to food presentation will also delight and inspire culinary students and sophisticated home cooks. Acclaimed food writer and culinary producer Christopher Styler describes seven distinctive plating styles, from Minimalist to Naturalist to Dramatic, with several striking examples of every genre. Each plating suggestion is accompanied by clear instructions along with color photos of step-by-step techniques and finished plates. Complete with essays on plating from ten leading chefs and recipes for the dishes featured, this book is a work of art in itself--a must for the kitchen shelf.

Genres: Cooking, Cookbooks, Food, Culinary

208 pages, Hardcover

First published September 8, 2006

Reviews

[Shea · Rating 2 out of 5]

I found this to be somewhat disappointing. Each section of the book has four or five examples of a plating style, demonstrated by one dish. For each dish, you get one photograph of the finished dish, and usually three small photographs demonstrating the process to construct the dish. The problem photographically is that the "completed dish" photos were almost all made with incredibly small depth of field, making it difficult to really see what was going on. Depth of field is an important tool in photography, no doubt, but in this sense it is used stylistically in a pretty hamfisted way, and it obscures that food. Furthermore, the construction photos often only show a fraction of the process-frustrating and unnecessary in a $40 book. Fortunately, I borrowed it from the library.

There are a number of profiles of individual chefs; had the chefs been given more of an opportunity to discuss their techniques and illustrate them, it would have been much better. As it is, they each get a vague single page summarizing their overall style, with another page dedicated to detailing their career. Congratulations to them, but I don't imagine they would have been included if they weren't worthy. Again, this distracts from what I was interested in learning.

Not that this is the book's fault, but also, I hate that you apparently can't do elegant food without micro-greens.

[Dan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I realize that I'm looking at a decade old book on plating styles, but at the same time, even thinking back to the sorts of dish presentation that was going on then, it seems a bit dated. All the chefs interviewed and all the dishes shown were contemporary for the time, but it almost felt like they picked their "safe dishes" to demonstrate. Perhaps that was to fit with the section themes that the author divided the book into? Either way, it was interesting, and there it offers much to think about even in today's plating styles in terms of how to balance the components of the dish and the plates themselves.

[Nichola · Rating 2 out of 5]

I just didn't really get much out of this book, even though it was clearly loads of work to put together- interviewing chefs, extensive pictures, a creation of categorizations. But for me there was very few actual skill instructions, and not really a basic introduction to what makes for an effective presentation of food, which is a shame because there doesn't seem to be much out there to address this. I just keep seeing cooking show contestants getting told off for being ineffective, but don't know where they are supposed to learn that. It is shape? Color? Empty space? Contrast? Layers? This book just seemed to show a few that the author judges as well done, and we should extrapolate I guess.

[Darren · Rating 4 out of 5]

To some this might be a form of “food porn” – looking at beautiful food laid out in beautiful surroundings which is a sort of tasteful art. To others this will be a lot more practical and a guide to helping them improve the visual presentation of their food dishes and to go on to the next level of culinary expertise.
It is true that we eat with our eyes as well as our mouths and people do pay a premium to eat tasty, beautiful food in fine surroundings. You can make the nicest, most tastiest food of all but it can be let down by being chucked on a plate. Plating it, as it is called, is a skill just as important in a professional kitchen as getting the best ingredients prepared and cooked.
Here with “Working the Plate” the author takes a look at seven different “plating styles” from acclaim American chefs, with a range of full-colour images give a step-by-step guide to recreating a given styled dish from scratch. The styles are entitled The Minimalist, The Architect, The Artist, Contemporary European Style, Asian Influences, The Naturalist, Dramatic Flair and Deserts, Classics and Contemporary. The detail given here is amazing and you can feel as you are getting a personal one-on-one with a chef. In fact I think this works better than a DVD as you can focus just on one stage at a time, fine tuning your own skills and maybe even developing parallel skills and styles at the same time.
This book might, however, give the wrong impression to the casual reader that it will teach about the job of working the plate and working in a busy kitchen. That is not the case. Here you get “only” top quality information about making high-quality presentations of food. Of course no presentation style is timeless and there is never no “set way” but, of course, yet once you have learned the basics and have got a good understanding of how to plate up, your own experiences will boost your confidence and let you start to try new things and expand your own styles.
This is probably not a book for the average home cook and it is certainly not a recipe book. But culinary students, real foodies and those who want to take their own cooking to the next step as part of a total “experience” will find this a book worthy of consideration. It is not a universal panacea or an instant “how to” guide, but nonetheless it is a solid reference work to an often-ignored or glossed over subject.

Working the Plate: The Art of Food Presentation, written by Christopher Styler and published by John Wiley & Sons. ISBN 9780471479390, 208 pages. Typical price: GBP18.



// This review appeared in YUM.fi and is reproduced here in full with permission of YUM.fi. YUM.fi celebrates the worldwide diversity of food and drink, as presented through the humble book. Whether you call it a cookery book, cook book, recipe book or something else (in the language of your choice) YUM will provide you with news and reviews of the latest books on the marketplace. //

[Happyreader · Rating 4 out of 5]

Obviously written for professional chefs, there are some interesting ideas to ponder for the home cook. While the minimalist style is too minimal for my liking (too little food for me), I did enjoy some of the suggestions in the architectural and naturalist styles. The bottom line to plating? Consider how the flavors, colors, shapes, and textures all work together. Consider cutting your food appropriately, like slicing up steaks to fan out, to fit certain compositions - or creating fun containers like the parmesan cups or chocolate cups shaped over balloons. And sometimes you need new plates in different colors and shapes, which doesn't work with my limited kitchen storage but there you have it.

[Dan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book provides excellent concepts and ideas for the home cook's special occasion or to understand how to "jazz up" a normal meal. Easy to read with great photos, there is something for most everyone, as long as you've cooked before. If you want to impress your guests, read this book. The authors clearly understand the relationship between the senses and food enjoyment, and the recipes are approachable without getting into lesser-understood molecular gastrononomy. Only complaint: there aren't full recipes for everything, since the authors assume you can prepare most items. This book is for inspiration first and foremost.

[Stephen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some culinarist once said that a person tastes a dish first with one's eyes. Presentation is an aspect of cooking which is too often neglected in cookbooks, save for the trite suggestion that one ought garnish with a sprig of parsley. This text examines the several schools of popular plate arrangement -- Euro, minimalist, stacked, naturalistic, artistic and so on -- and offers four or five exemplary dishes with precise instructions for creating the effect. This is a useful text for the more serious home cook and well worth the purchase price. [Does anyone but me find it mildly ironic that the author of a book on plating is named Styler?]

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

I haven't made a single recipe out of this book and yet I am fascinated by it. It is a visual treat and an inspiration to me on how I can improve my meal presentation skills, not so much for mac n cheese with fishsticks, but for the dinner parties I love to throw. Not all of this is complicated. With a couple of extra condiment squeeze bottles, skewers, and herbs, you can make any meal presentation magnificent!

[Beth Lequeuvre · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was wonderful. I learned a lot. First off, I am definitely not a minimalist, I'm more of a naturalist when it comes to plating style. There were a lot of techniques explained that I had never been exposed to. And the recipes in the back were quite helpful. I think I might have to buy this one.

[Laura · Rating 5 out of 5]

excellent>> great gourmet ideas and recipes. the photos are great and show you what you need to prepare the dishes yourself. i love this book!

[Mike · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is worth 3 stars if for no other reason than you learn the trick on how to make a bowl out of chocolate sauce using a balloon.