Cooking Primer: Plate Presentation 101

The Basics
Essential Garnishing Tips
Essential Presentation Tips

Food presentation can make or break a dining experience (or break a restaurant, for that matter). It may be the secret to culinary success. The food has to taste good, of course, but a lot of mediocre cuisine gets by because it's offered to the diner in an appealing manner. On the other hand, no matter how outrageously fantastic the food may taste--as good, say, as Alain Ducasse's truffled foie gras or Grandma's apple pie à la mode--if it's served to you on a dirty rimmed plate, you probably won't want to eat it.

Which isn't to say that all dishes need to look like a mockup of the Eiffel Tower. Food presentation may be as simple as adding a sprig of parsley to a consommé, but it must always take into account the aesthetic of the plate as a whole.

The keys to an excellent presentation aesthetic are light, perspective, and, above all, respect for the medium of food, as if it were an art form. The reason those ridiculous salads that resemble an architecture student's project dazzle is because, when presented well, light and air are filtered through the greens, creating an ethereal effect (leading you to think that if you eat this salad, you will actually lose weight).

Don't get me wrong; flat food is beautiful too--picture a plate of salmon carpaccio. This dish works because the fish retains its integrity despite being bombarded by a mallet. It should not be lost behind masks of flavor, but instead show its face: striations, color, and sheen make for a simple, honest, and effective dish.

But no matter how artistically the dish is presented, the food must taste good in order for the full equation to work. If you're presented with an eye-popping rutabaga and lentil "Napoleon" that turns out to be the taste disaster of the millennium, chances are you won't rave about the dining experience. Food presentation should be a symbiosis between taste and aesthetics.

When planning your next dinner party, consider these tips on what to do--and what not to do--with garnishes.
· Avoid a color scheme cop-out--for example, adding a red tomato garnish to every green dish--unless, of course, the taste combination makes sense, or you are trying to make a Christmas tree out of your plate.
· Try not to use the same garnish on every plate (e.g., cayenne pepper or confectioner's sugar around the plate's edge), unless, again, it makes gustatory sense.
· Don't repeat garnishes on different plates within the same meal. In fact, don't repeat the main ingredients of different plates within the same meal.
· When deciding on garnishes, your creativity and sensibility are your only limitations. Don't get in a parsley rut (although it's a fine garnish for the right situation), and use ingredients in the dish itself to decorate the plate. This is the easiest and most sensible way to garnish, because you know you can't go wrong with matching tastes.
· Prepare the garnish in a way that best accents natural beauty and patterns but doesn't disrupt the dish itself: crispy, curly bacon on a bacon flan; a blanched savoy cabbage "rib" placed gently next to its bumpy, buttery leaves; julienned lemon zest on a citrus tart.

There are some trickier garnishes. They're not necessarily more complicated in design, but have a taste and texture used as part of the dish itself: young dandelion leaves (with stems) or chives accompanying a smoked trout omelet; whole mixed peppercorns on marinated fresh anchovies. The danger comes if one doesn't have a good understanding of taste, which increases the likelihood of ruining the dish entirely.

Ironically, garnishes that leave the biggest imprint on the taste buds are often the most understated. Several grains of fleur de sel (flowers of salt) sprinkled on a T-bone steak, for instance, sparkle on the meat and on your tongue before melting away into a good memory.

Even more extreme than mere salt is no garnish at all. Why upset the perfect state of equilibrium found on the surface of a crème caramel? The smooth-as-glass surface is the garnish here--along with a spoon.

· Place the food on the plate as if nature were putting it there. Give it that je ne sais quoi the French do so well--a perfect imperfection.
· Be careful of overcrowding a plate with food; you may offend the sensibilities of the guest.
· Always have enough food on a plate. If not, you are inviting your guest to never return to your table.
· Odd numbers of food items on a plate generally look better than even numbers.
· Try to leave one-third (or sometimes two-thirds) of the plate or glass empty, taking into account the food/liquid proportions.
· Put food on the plate--no matter what its temperature--immediately before serving it. A wilted mixed greens salad is demoralizing.
· If serving hot food, make sure that the food and the plate are hot when plating.
· Make sure plate edges are clean. If you need to clean them, do so in one circular sweep with a moist paper towel.

Marcela Broussard is a professionally trained chef who spent several years cooking in top Michelin-rated restaurants in France and Spain. She presently lives in Seattle, where she enjoys cooking at home for family and friends as well as writing about food.