Hello chefs. You're listening to chefs.
PS a podcast. I'm your host Andrew natera.
Today, we're going to get into a controversial PSA that I posted
the other day and that is that taste is greater and more
important than presentation. And I know I'm going to catch
some heat for this when I posted the PSA, everyone's in my DM say
no I'm wrong. Presentation is equally as
important blah blah, blah blah blah.
Wrong taste is superior and I want to talk about why and I
know it's a controversial subject.
I know there's like a lot of a lot of chefs are like, no, no.
But you eat with your eyes first chef?
Yeah, that's that's dumb. And I'm not saying that
presentation isn't important. Because it is, and if you work
in a high-end restaurant, plating skills are critical, you
need to know how to use your offset spatula.
You need to use your tweezers. You need to know how to make
canals with spoons. You need to know how to properly
dab your meat and so on and so forth.
You need to have your random placement of flowers and herbs
and microgreens and garnishes presentation is important.
And I don't want to discredit that, but in the hierarchy of
importance, Presentation is not greater than taste.
So I want to share a story with everyone when I was a very young
cook. You know.
I don't know about 22 years old, I was really excited to go to a
seminar with a certified Master Chef and you know for people
that are not from my era a certified Master Chef was a huge
deal, it still is a huge deal. I don't know if it has the same
popularity as it did when I was coming up, but it's still a huge
deal. It's very it's a very difficult
exam to become a certified Master Chef through the American
culinary Federation. Duration, you know, there's a
cooking practical, there was a some tests that you had to take.
You have to be a certified executive, chef blah, blah, blah
point, being that. It's a big deal.
If you're a certified Master Chef.
So when I was a young cook, I went to a seminar with a
certified Master Chef and he said something that stayed with
me pretty much for the rest of my career and really changed my
mind. Because, you know, master chefs
at that point in time, really worthy Authority, when it came
to cooking and what the Master Chef said.
To me, because I was a young cook.
I cared about plating I wanted. You know, I wanted my food to
look cool. I wanted it to have all the, all
the, you know, soigne garnish. And all the things that impress
people, when they look at food, I was really into plate.
And I would practice plating more, that I'd practice cooking
and the Master Chef said, when you get a beautiful dish, And
you're blind. Does it matter?
Do you care that? It's beautiful.
If you cannot see and he had a great point and someone argued.
Well, you eat with your eyes. First you know, presentation is
everything he said, okay great. But how long does presentation
matter? It usually only matters for a
few seconds before you start eating it which I thought was a
very bad, a valid point and it really changed my thought
process into how I think about plating, how I think about food
because a lot of times we spend so much time Each time making
sure that the dish is beautiful. We live in the digital world.
Now everyone has Instagram, everyone's posting their art of
plating dishes, you know, tagging food stars, or whoever,
right? And people go out of their way
to get some clout on Instagram with beautiful plating.
And I'm not going to lie, some of the, some of the plates are
beautiful. And but I would say don't be
fooled. A lot of the food that you see
on Instagram for some of these, you know.
Plating websites or I'm sorry. Plating plating Pages, it's
ait's a, it's bullshit food. It's stuff that would never work
in a restaurant. It's stuff that is specifically
designed to be displayed on Instagram and the reason you
wouldn't serve it in a restaurant is because, you know,
you might have 20 30 touch points on it and you have three
Cooks. So it's not realistic food.
Now, I'm not talking about these world-class restaurants like,
you know, Nomar per se or something like that, you know,
when they're Posting food, that's really how you're going
to get it. And and those restaurants what
I'm talking about is like the guy that you've never heard of
that has 200,000 followers on Instagram and, you know, he's
got, you know, the the universal spiral of some sort of puree
with a whole bunch of flowers and you know, it looks really
pretty. I don't know if it tastes good.
That's that's kind of the point is we put so much focus on
plating because we're incentivised on social media to
be rewarded. With likes and comments and
shares because our food is pretty and played it nicely, but
if you're a chef or cook and I'm assuming you are because you're
listening to this the food that you serve on Instagram, does it
matter unless you could pull it off in your restaurant.
That's what's important and needs to be delicious in the
restaurant. So I would ask anyone to go
through this exercise that I like to use is think about the
Most beautiful dish you've ever been served or created, right?
So so think about that dish, what it looked like and and have
that in your mind. Now write that dish down or
remember it. And now think back to the best
dish or best meal you've ever had.
And then I would challenge you, are they the same is the most
beautiful dish that you've ever had.
Also the most delicious dish that you've ever had and the
chances are, they're not. And, and the fact of the matter
is, I know, they're not. And if you come to me and say,
no, they are there. Same dish and say, okay you're
full of shit, you just want to prove a point because I know
they're not some of the best meals that you've had some of
the most tasty are the, you know, it's the beautiful Taco
that you're getting from a from a, from a food truck or at
someone's home or a moment in time at a world-class
restaurant. These are the most delicious
things that you've had in sometimes the most delicious.
The most delicious things are plated.
You know, very humbly, very Simply.
And so it's important that we see the distinction between
plating and taste. Now, even though we went through
that exercise, there's still going to be people that say no
no no presentation is more important, okay?
And I still haven't convinced you.
So we're going to try one last time to convince you.
Why taste is superior to plating.
Let's say, you have to choose and there's two plates in front
of you. One of those plates is
absolutely beautiful. It has everything on it, it has
some stupid spiral of a puree. It has flowers.
It has shaved raw vegetables. It's plated in a amazing fashion
that you'd expect from someone that you've never heard of that
has 100,000 followers. It's just stunning.
But there's a catch, it's spoiled.
Now, there's another plate next to it and the other plate.
It served on a disposable plate and it's humbly presented, but
it is just super tasty cooked by one of the best chefs.
In the world. But it looks sloppy because it's
on a on a disposable plate. Which one do you want to eat?
Do you want to eat the delicious dish that looks?
Okay. Or do you want to eat the
spoiled food? That looks beautiful?
I mean, it's a rhetorical question because if you have,
you know, any doubt that you would eat the delicious food
over the spoiled food? Well, then I think we could, we
could kind of rest the case a little bit that taste is the
most important thing and then presentation would come second.
Now, I feel like I've been beating up presentation a little
bit, so I want to expand upon that presentation is important
and knowing how to plate is a skill and we touched on that
earlier. But here's here's another
thought exercise. If you could think of something
like the classic dishes, you know, a roasted chicken or a
prime rib or anything like that. These are dishes that would be
delicious. 50 years ago, they were delicious 20 years ago,
they're delicious today most likely they will be delicious 20
years from now 50 years from now, so on and so forth.
Because things that taste good are going to taste good
regardless of where you are in time, right?
But when it comes to plating and presentation, that is evolving
very quickly. You know, that's a, you know,
that's an art form. That's, that's, that's changing
with Trends and it's And it's very quick.
Now, right, you could go back. I would challenge most chefs to
do this. Go back and look at your plates
from a few years ago. And then look at your food now
and then say okay. Which one do you like better?
Most likely going to say, oh, okay.
I like my plating style now but a few years ago the way you were
plating. Like that was that was all the
rage food Trends and plating Trends evolved.
So quickly that your head is going to be spending trying to
keep up with what is the latest and greatest way to present
food. So, I would say fundamentally
make sure that your food is delicious first.
So this is what I do when I'm developing a dish.
I make sure it tastes good. I go through the iterative
process, we try it with different chefs when everyone's
satisfied that. Okay, it's delicious.
Then we work backwards on the plating, like, okay, now that it
tastes good. How do we make sure it looks
good. And sometimes, you know, I'm not
going to sit up here on my high horse and say that, I don't
sometimes make decisions based on presentation because I do,
but I've refined it along. The way like I don't make as
many stupid mistakes as I did early on, in my career when I
thought plating was more important.
So there's a lot of ways that you could enhance the
presentation and this is goes everything from, you know, if
you're working in that type of restaurant, maybe you pour the
sauce tableside, maybe you add another version of the same
vegetable. So maybe you have a puree of a
vegetable and then you also have a cooked version of the same
vegetable looking beautifully or, you know, you have herbs or
whatever is going to impact the color on there.
But the old saying is If you put something on the plate it should
have a purpose. And you know, they used to drill
that into our heads in culinary school like everything on the
plate. Needs to have a purpose and
you're like yeah, you got to have functional garnishes.
Yeah, yeah, I get it. It makes a lot more sense.
Now, that I'm designing dishes because I see so many dishes.
Now that have things on them, that really don't belong.
And you wonder, why is that on that dish?
It doesn't belong. And if the only reason it's on
the dishes because it makes it look better but it doesn't Make
it taste better and may you may need to remove it because it may
be detracting from the overall presentation.
So I think it's very important to work first with the dish and
then work on presentation s. So I want to make sure that
that's clear. I'm not I'm not one of these
people. That says oh yeah, taste matters
and presentation, that's not important.
Presentation is important but it's Step 2 in the process now,
people listening to this podcast may or may not know if you know
me personally and you're one of my friends, you know, obviously
that I was a chef for 20. Seven years and I've stepped
away from the kitchen. You I'd like to say, I'm
retired, but what I mean, is, I'm no longer running
professional kitchens day to day after so many years in there.
I thought it was time to step away and the reason I bring that
up is because if one day, I ever decide to go back into the
kitchen, people say, are you worried that time will pass you
by that? The food will evolve, and the
trends will evolve and you know, quite honestly.
No, I'm not too worried about it.
Obviously, I fully understand that if I were to take 10 years
off and we see how quickly food evolves within one year.
So, if you could extrapolate that to 10 years out, I think we
would see some massive changes in the way that we cook in the
ingredients that were using, and to what's trendy.
But I wouldn't really worry too much.
So, let's just use this as a thought experiment.
If you pulled me out of cooking for 10 years that you threw me
back in. And you said, we need you to
perform Format the top, I wouldn't worry because during my
time as a chef, I picked up invaluable skills.
Along the way. I know how to lead a kitchen.
I know how to manage a kitchen. I understand how to cook.
I know how to use a knife. I know how to use pots and pans.
I know how to work with different ingredients.
My fundamentals are strong. What I would do is I would say.
Okay, give me a few weeks. Let me research who the top
restaurants in the world are. Let me see what the plating.
Miles are, let me see what to the ingredients tiles are.
Let me see what's new that I'm unaware of.
Let me see what's no longer relevant and then let me take it
from there. I don't think it would be that
difficult because I already know how to cook.
The only thing I'd be updating is just, you know, the trend
changed, right? So that's new.
And the plating style changed, that's new.
But unless we're cooking with robots, everyone still is using
a knife. There's one still works on a
cutting board. One still working with pots and
pans. I don't think I'd be that big of
a fish out of water. And so, that's why I always tell
people, like, in the order of hierarchy, it's like know how to
cook, make sure it tastes good. Presentation comes third,
because presentation is the one that is going to change the
fastest and be least relevant over time.
And what you want to do as a chef is you want to build skills
that are Timeless. That this is this is going to
give your career longevity. So, you know, I know that's a
little bit of a rant one. Last point, I Make is a lot of
people say, well what happens to these chefs that don't evolve,
you know, why is it that they can't figure out the latest
plating Trend, or whatever it is?
That that has kind of at a certain point made them no
longer relevant in the dining scene.
And I could tell you because I this is something that I
struggled with my last couple of years.
In the kitchen is the plating seems less and less important
over time. And the food that's delicious to
you is universally delicious but people have seen it before and
so when people say like what do I crave?
I crave simple meals, you know, a good piece of fish, a grilled
steak roast a chicken, whatever the case may be, I don't
necessarily crave the most, beautiful trendy dish and I
think that's where a lot of chefs go wrong.
Is they still want to play at the top?
They still want to be an important Chef in their
Community, but they don't want to Evolve with the trends and,
and, and the plating cells. And I'll be honest with you.
This is this is where plating and Trends are important,
because if you don't want to play that game anymore, you run
the risk. And I'm not saying it's gonna
happen to everybody, but you do run the risk of no longer being
relevant at the top end of those competitive restaurants.
So something for chefs to keep in mind is that I felt like I
was pretty good as a chef, like a trek.
Cognizing the trends and understanding that we had to be
on them. But if I could be honest, that
food didn't excite me. I just knew that, like, okay, if
we're going to play at this level and we're going to play at
the top, this is the kind of food that we need to do these
the ingredients that we need to look at this is what we need to
Plate, like, but it didn't excite me.
I just knew I was playing the game at that point, because what
always excites me is just simple, technical, beautiful,
delicious food and that to me is more Timeless than You know, to
the thing that I keep harping on is, you know, the the, the silly
art of plating swirls with, you know, purple and orange and all
these incredible colors anyway, rant over.
I hope you all enjoyed today's rant, and hopefully, you took
something away from it. Learn something.
Maybe you agree with me. Maybe I changed your perspective
on this. Maybe you still think I'm full
of shit. Regardless, doesn't matter?
I want to make sure that you heard it.
I explain my case and hopefully you can use this in your own
thoughts and methodology when running your own kitchen.
So anyway, we'll see you on the next one.
Thank you all. you can use this in your own thoughts and
methodology when running your own kitchen.
So anyway, we'll see you on the next one.
Thank you all.