Hello chefs. You're listening to chefs, PSA
podcast. I'm your host Andre natera.
On today's episode, we're going to talk about plating Styles and
different plates. You could use for them.
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light.com. All right, chefs, let's get into
this episode. Before we get into it, let me
give you an update. I always like to give you an
update of a big one, but I am working on the line.
Cook survival, manual. Audiobook.
So, I think that should be released most likely early
February. It's a companion to the first
book, The, how not to be the biggest idiot in the kitchen.
So, if you haven't picked that book up, Should go get it, the
paperback version and ebook versions of line.
Cook survival manual are available.
I want to make sure that there's an audio book available for it
as well because I know a lot of people are moving towards
audiobooks. I know, I listen to a lot of
audiobooks. So I want to make sure that it
was available for everyone and the narrator that I work with,
he's got a busy schedule. So most likely it won't be
released until early February, anyway, not related to this, but
I thought it was pretty cool. This week, I started messing
around with an AI. Image generator, which I thought
was pretty deep where you type in a prompt and then it gives
you whatever you want. And I thought this is this is a
very wild thing like How quickly a i is moving, and the level of
quality that you're getting from AI.
I think the world that we're going to be looking at within a
year, is going to be completely different than it is right now.
So any way I could, I know I did an episode on a, I could a very
fascinated by it. I think, I think, if people
haven't caught on to that, I wrote an AI recipe book.
A while back, it took me like three days to write it, but
anyway, it was very quickly, it saved a lot of time for me to
write these recipes. So if you haven't started
working with AI, And you feel like goofing off, I was using
chat GPT on open a.i., because everyone keeps asking me, and
I'll even say in the comments like 100 times open a ichat GPT
in the next person will comment, what do using anyway.
Read the comments and you'll know what I'm using, but anyway,
if you want to experiment with AI, this is this is pretty cool.
I don't get, I don't get why people are resistant to take a
look at it because I think it's like Google, it's just another
tool that we're going to have. It makes you exponentially more
efficient enough about AI. That's Not what you guys.
Listen to this, let's talk about Chef stuff.
Today's episode, we're going to talk about plating and different
plates and different plating Styles.
So I think it's important that people understand that plating
Trends come and go. So, I've kind of been a little
bit reluctant to talk about the way people should plate, because
you'll start doing something like, you know, I could think
back a couple of years. Like, when I started, it was
partially on the rim, you know? That's when I started cooking,
you know, there was Rosemary sprigs everywhere and, and lemon
crowns. And you know, Birds birds made
out of fruit was very popular, if you know pineapples or
whatever the case may be. And anyway if you do that, now
people can look at you like you're crazy.
So anyway you can't do that today.
So if you're listening to this podcast 10 years from now,
understand that we're going to talk about is kind of the
current plating styles that might not make sense in the
future. So keep that in mind.
I must say plates and plating. Go hand in hand.
It's very important to select the right plates.
It's for the right type of plating experience that you
want. And I want to, I want to touch
on kind of understanding your restaurant, understanding your
audience, you know, where you at?
Are you in a very high-end restaurant?
Are you in a more casual setting?
Are you in a three-michelin-star restaurant?
Are you in a cool trendy restaurant?
Because all of those types of environments require a very
different type of plate that you should be.
Using this show is sponsored by Light.
And personally, I do you steal light.
I actually, I love them. I've worked with them for a long
time, there a supporter of an organization that's near and
dear to my heart. They support Mentor bkb, which
is the organization that supports a competitor to go to
the Bocuse D'Or, which is happening right now, probably,
as this podcast is being released.
Go, Team, USA. Shout out to Team USA, Robert
Salada. Key, who's the coach over there?
Jeffrey, Hayashi, who's the competitor for Team USA?
Anyway, Steel. Like supports Mentor bkb.
So, I'm a big fan of them. They've been very supportive of
me and the organizations that I'm passionate about throughout
the years, aside from them being supportive of things that are
near and dear to my heart. I also think that they offer
great products anyway. So let's just kind of talk
through that a little bit. So if we're talking, casual
dining, right? This is kind of your entry
level. You need, you need to make sure
that you're choosing the right plates for the job.
So, in casual dining, you know, you hate to say your slang in
plates, but I don't, I can't think of another word to To use,
but it's a more quick hectic environment.
So you need a heavier piece of china to stand up to the volume
that's going on, you know, plates fall often and chaotic
environments. So you want to have your China?
That's that's not going to break as much.
That's not going to chip as much something heavy-duty.
That's going to stand up to the PACE and intensity that goes in
a fast-paced, casual dining setting, something like The
Homer Laughlin, or the Hall, China, Robert Gordon like that
is kind of the idea. Real China that I would use in a
casual setting, kind of, in the, in the mid level, you know,
that's kind of where you want to.
Look at your steel out, your folio, your your Royal,
porcelain your Robert Gordon, China, your mom Studio.
That's, you know, a more of a combination, it's still hard,
it's still sturdy but you're going to see more modern shapes
different colors and things like that.
And then on your very high-end, you know, that that's when
you're going to get into like the bone china, the William
Edwards bone china? The Renee Osorio, Steel like
bone. China is something that you're
going to see more in the high ended.
And I'm not saying you don't see it in the Casual as well because
I know I've used bone china in casual settings as well.
It is a little bit more elegant, it does require a lot of
finesse. You don't want to be slang in
plates using bone china because it is more fragile.
So choosing the right style of plates that you're going to use
is very important for the type of restaurant that you have and
knowing, which plates to choose very important, right?
So be smart about it, your Making a big investment, I know
as a chef. We would budget China glass and
silver. What we call the the big four
really trying to Glass silverware Linen, in most hotels
and restaurants you budget that and you would put big chunks of
money quarterly so you could buy it.
So you do a month, end inventory, you trued up the next
month's. You see what your variances 20s,
any or vote, variance to par, you get a chunk of money and
then you buy what you need. So, I know that obviously food
cost labor cost. These are your biggest expenses
in. In a restaurant setting, but
China, glass and silverware, are also some of the biggest
expenses that also go into operating, a kitchen /
restaurant. So getting something that is the
right China for your location. The bright silver where the
right glassware for your location is very important.
So like I said, if you're working in a fine dining place
you're probably not going to use all China and if you're working
in a very casual setting you're probably not going to use
William Edwards, bone china. So so so keep that in mind,
right? You want to make sure.
Sure, that you're using the right tool for the job.
In this case, we're talking about the China that you're
using. Now, there are some cases where,
you know, let's let's just say you're in a big hotel and I know
a lot of chefs that listen to this podcast working, you know,
and big hotels and you have to kind of watch your costs and
things like that. So you, you sometimes want to do
a little. I don't want to say sneaky, but
you want that look and feel of a bone china.
Maybe you have a exclusive Lounge, like for members only or
something like that. A lot of hotels, do You want to
have that fine dining look maybe in room service or something
like that. But you also know that you're
going through a lot of volume. So you need something that has
that look. But also has that feel so, you
know, maybe you're looking at the folio bone china or
something like that, right? So, so a bone china look, but
maybe it's a little bit more affordable, you can do things
like that. Anyway.
We digress. I think when we talk about
plating and plate, Trends, what I see right now, as you know, I
go to a lot of restaurants or heating on Instagram.
I like to call it as I'm looking at all the food pictures, what
you're starting to see chefs kind of Shifting towards.
And obviously you know, plating Styles and plate Styles, they
change over the course of time. But one thing that you're
starting to see right now is kind of this more natural you
know these Stone glazed Stoneware natural glazed plates
that have, you know, I don't want to call them Earth Tones
but you know, like maybe pink isn't the right word, but maybe
like a Peach Stone. They're brushed they look
hand-painted plates. Like that are very trendy right
now or darker plates, which, you know, for so many years it was
always beautiful, white china. Now, I think it's okay to serve
things in Darker bowls plates Coupe plates.
It almost has like a like a Japanese restaurant.
Men looking bowl style, you know, I can think of like the
I'm trying to think you'll see these plates that have like a
little bit of fish. Maybe some, shaved, vegetables,
pour a little bit of broth tableside like the folio as oars
plates that, you know, steel light has to offer.
So those are kind of the things that you want to look at that
natural style plate, with with different types of colors,
because sometimes your food is going to lack a little bit of
color. So you need the plate to kind of
make it pop a little bit, but but you also don't want the
plate to be so beautiful that it takes away from the food.
But I do want to talk about that in a second.
We'll get to that when we talk about different strategies when
it comes to plating. But anyway, what you'll notice
right now is very trendy in the restaurant world.
A lot of chefs are opening up. I mean, who's opening up a
Mediterranean restaurant right now raise your hand, right?
If you're listening across the world, you're opening up
Mediterranean restaurants across the board or some sort of Middle
Eastern style restaurant. Is that Food has become very
popular, it's definitely having a moment.
So, a lot of these natural plating Styles lend themselves
well to that style of food. A lot of, a lot of restaurants
are starting to move into this more shared plates concept.
So even though we're in a postcode patrolled, I don't
think it took very long for us to go back to some old habits,
where it's food arrives, as you order it, and then everyone's
sharing food, so I can think of, like the Mayhem Studio.
Plates that are that, like, have this Stone glazed, look where
you can Saturday, where you could serve like a lot of little
Tapas and and a little shareable snacks and things like that.
That's, that's also very popular.
So, it's important and I can't, I can't emphasize this enough.
It's important that you choose the right plate for the set and
setting. And what I mean by that is like
if you're if you have this very casual Mediterranean restaurant
again, you don't want to be serving bone china for that,
right? You'll also start to notice like
a lot of food is being plated. Again, the shareable things
right? And what's called like a
stacking tray. So it's like it's like a
combination Bowl. It almost looks like an ashtray,
but you know, the sides are straight.
They're not, they're not curved like a bull, the sides sides are
straight but you could use it as a bowl.
And I know, you know, it's very trendy right now is like you
could put one of these stacking trays and maybe you fill it up
with rice or rocks or something like that.
In the you stack a couple of bites on top.
So those traits are very useful in that and that That regard an
interesting thing also and I was doing this right before in my
last job right before I retired is it was very cool to have mix
and match China. So we might have something that
looks very elegant would call like the grandma style plates
mixed in with something more modern.
It was just a very eclectic mix. The food would always come out
on a different look so it was fun.
It mixed it up. The idea of serving food in your
house. If you're having a dinner party,
you would just grab whatever you have in your pantry and you
might have a mixer. After something that your
parents gave, you something that you bought a one-off piece and
so you have this mix and match Style on the plate and that's
the way it would look at home, right?
You'd have all these different these different colors.
These different shapes. Same way in a restaurant maybe
on a buffet or something like that.
You're going to have all sorts of different styles and shapes
on. There's everything, you know,
might be a very beautiful piece of china, it might be a stacking
plate, it might be a bowl, it might be whatever, right?
So mixing that all up adding color and vibrancy to the to the
station, whether you know, we're looking at a table scape or if
we're looking at a buffet or whatever the case may be even
for photo shoots, all of that works well.
So again, you need to make sure you're making good decisions.
When you're selecting two plates that you want in your
restaurant, then when we get into the, when we get into the
very high-end level, and you'll see this in a lot of like three
Michelin star restaurants, or restaurants, that are very high,
fine, dining, and they start using the bone china.
I think, I think one of the things that's really cool, is a
lot of places. I know still light will do this
for you. We'll use the bone china.
Like, you know, the William Edwards, where you have
beautiful patterns, that might have a little bit of gold in
there or something like that. There might be multiple serving
pieces. You might stack a dish, you'll
see this often where, you know, there's there's three plates,
stacked on one another and then there's something, you know, I'm
just I'm just making this up. There's a there's a beautiful
piece of fish or a cup stacked on three other plates and
there's some theatrics in the presentation.
So understanding that incorporating some bone, china,
incorporating some, you know, stoneware and all that, it could
make a really cool feeling out the restaurant that I was chef
of right before, right. Before I started chefs PSA, we
would incorporate a big mix of things.
So we'd have things that were on bone china, we'd have things
that were, you know, like stoneware things like that and
it made sense because sometimes we do like a high-low plating
concept, and I'll tell you The story and then after the story
will get into plating strategies.
But anyway, so here was the story.
If you're going to charge high prices for something as a chef,
really you got to look at two things, your they're providing
an exceptional quality ingredient that costs you a lot
of money. So, obviously your parts, you're
passing some of that markup off onto the customer.
So let's just say you're serving foie, gras truffles Lobster,
something like that caviar. Well, You need a beautiful
vessel to present that in sometimes.
You're presenting something very familiar and comfortable and How
do you get a lot of money for it?
Well, I'll tell you what I did. If you've ever seen the movie
Inglorious Basterds, and I love that movie and one of my
favorite food scenes in the history of food scenes for
movies TV, whatever the case may be, is the scene where they are
eating the apple strudel and they go and they open up the,
they put the thing down and they get the cream and they put it on
top and there's this whole presentation.
I remember watching that. I'm like, that looks so good.
I love Love that scene and I love the way that they eat it
and you know, the cinematography is great.
Anyway, we digress. What I loved about that so much?
Is that in the restaurant, that was upscale dining that I had
prior, I got with the pastry chef and I said, I want to serve
a lemon tart and the lemon tart wasn't necessarily on the level
of the restaurant. Like, it was a little bit.
It was a little bit too simple. I was too much of a fastball
down the middle for the level of food that we were trying to
provide I said, but we're going to serve it on a beautiful plate
with a gold rim and we're going to come out and we're going to
have this service piece where we're going to bring the cream
like Inglourious Basterds. And we're gonna put the cream on
top so you could take something that's very simple and very
familiar but you could present it in a way that's unique that
would allow people to be like, wow, like I've had a lemon tart
before but I haven't had it presented that way.
And so you put a little bit of theater behind it.
So there's a difference again, so So again, we're talking about
plating Styles but there's we're also talking about service and
theater. There's a difference between
getting a dish that has truffles on it and then there's a
difference between that and then the chef coming to the table and
shaving the truffles for you and saying, tell me, when to stop,
that's a different experience. I'll tell you a story years ago.
I went to spiaggia restaurant and Chicago and I wish I could
tell you the name of the champagne but I remember they
had brought out a bowl of water and they popped the champagne
inside the bowl of water, and they did.
Abel's, I was just a really cool presentation and I've never seen
anyone do it in a big clear bowl of water.
And I just remember thinking, like that was so cool.
Everyone else around it, saw it and they're like, that's cool
and other people order the bottle of champagne.
I wish I could remember what the champagne was, but I thought the
story was super cool and the theatrics of the dish were super
cool or I'm sorry, the champagne was super cool that it allows
them to charge more, so doing things like that.
Bringing the cheese gear, add on to the table and saying, You
know, we have these 20 selections achieves, what would
you want? That is a different experience,
bringing a breadbasket and saying we have all these breads
that were just made today. So you take something, simple,
like bread. And now, all of a sudden you
make it a bread experience or, you know, where they do the
canal of butter. And they put that on there that
that elevates the dining experience and then now you
could charge a lot more for something that wouldn't.
You might be free or maybe you wouldn't charge a whole lot for
it in a casual setting. So it's a lot of times it's the
same food, it's just the way it's presented.
Comes to plating Styles, obviously Trends change and
things like that, but so here's some things to keep in mind,
like whenever you're playing something, everything has to be
proportionate. So, whatever the feature
ingredient is needs to be, it needs to be prominent so you
don't want to order. I'm giving you an example, you
don't want to order a steak plate and you have a little bit
of bead and then the whole lot of everything else.
So you want to make sure that whatever it is that you're
selling that the feature is there.
I like to keep my plating to a minimum in general.
I don't like a ton of things on There.
And I know it's very trendy right now sometimes to have a,
you know, maybe too much. But I think everything, you
know, I still subscribe to the idea of everything needs to have
a purpose on the plate. So if you're going to garnish
with herbs, whether we're talking flowers, maybe you're
getting a whole bunch of flowers from Chef's Garden, or whatever
the case may be. You want to make sure that it,
you taste it with the dish. Does it taste good?
Is it beautiful? Yes.
But does it taste good. So you want to make sure that
you're going through these exercises, right?
So like, let's say borage flowers, have like a cucumber
taste. Maybe you're putting that on
cucumber. Okay, that makes sense.
But I wouldn't put it on something where it would be a
clash of flavor. So looking at the plate
aesthetically, a lot of times you could use negative space to
make the plating look, you know, more aesthetically pleasing, you
want to have a variety of shapes so my formula and I came up with
this and I know I've talked about another podcast but I'll
kind of bring it up again. My formula for plating when I
ran a higher-end restaurant was always like this.
It was you always have to have a protein.
That was that was your focus, right?
So, It might not be a proteus, let's just say it's a carrot
dish or pasta dish. But, whatever the focus was that
needed to be your primary thing on the plate.
And then there would be a lot of Supporting Cast.
So you have your main, you have your star, your main character,
and The Supporting Cast. So let's just, let's just say,
in this case, maybe it's a piece of meat and then you'd have all
the things that support the meat.
So you might have a puree of carrot and then you might have
some shaved carrots and then you might have some roasted carrots
and then you might have some carrot fronds and then you might
have something else. So my thing was you always want
to incorporate If there was a vegetable on there, you'd want
to incorporate that multiple times on the plate.
So, like I said, you have a carrot, you have a carrot puree
and then you'd also have Franz and maybe a raw shaved carrot on
there. So you did she have some visual
textures and understand that people could look at things and
say, okay, I could get that there's going to be texture on
there, right? When we're plating, we want to
make sure that there's very clean plates going out.
So I always have plate wipes, and by the way, You should be
using plate wipes. If you're not using plate,
wipes, use plate wipes, there's a lot of different ways to do
it. Some people just roll up a
towel, some people put a squirt bottle full of like vodka or
something like that and I'll spray the plate and then the
wipe it other people I've seen cut sponges up like regular
dish. Sponge is clean sponges and
they'll soak them in vodka and they'll use that to wipe the
plates, which I think is pretty cool.
Some people will take little torque towels or chick towels or
something like that. Cut them roll them, soak them,
use that to White plates. But anyway, Late wipes.
Make sure your plate is clean and then when you're plating,
you know, have an intense focus and deliberate intent, and what
you're doing. So things to keep in mind, like
if you're putting meat on a plate, you want to dab the meat.
So let's say you slice some beef and it's maybe you didn't let it
rest long enough. You want to just kind of dab it
on a towel or something to absorb any any leakage to make
sure that it's going on the plate and it's not going to
leave like a pool of of pool of blood, basically on the plate or
something like that. You want to dab your meat before
it goes on the plate. So it goes on clean.
You're not making boil. All over with your hands.
That's why I let you know, I know tweezers, you know, they
catch a lot of shit when people are using tweezers.
But the reason people use tweezers, obviously because
they're precise, right there are tool to make sure that what
you're doing delivers, a precise and result in what you're trying
to do. So placing herbs where they go,
putting a spoonful of puree, and there's a lot of things that
people could do with purees, right.
So shout out to the French Laundry and Chef David, Breeden,
Thomas Keller and the new book French Laundry per se.
They go in depth On using. Pre hydrated xanthum gum and you
know using it in different purees and things like that.
I think that's an incredible tool and Chef should definitely
be using that for your purees where they hydrate the xanthum
gum and the blender, they put it in a cryovac machine or
something to kind of compress it.
They have, I know I used to do this when I was a chef, we'd
have a big, you know, 5 gallon bucket of pre.
Hi. So you put a little bit of
squeeze bottle, so when you need to add a little bit of pre-high
to a green puree, or I puree or whatever.
The case, maybe you could do that.
So when you put it on the plate, it doesn't weep and it holds it
adds a little bit of structure to the puree, but it also makes
sure that it doesn't weep on the plate.
So, you know what I'm talking about, right?
You put a little, a little sauce or something like that, tomato
sauce on a plate. And then, it has, you know, a
couple of seconds like a little pool of water, a little ring of
water around the puree. So doing things like that will
elevate your plating skills, right?
There's some tools of refinement when it comes to plating an
offset pal. Let knife to do smears and
things like that to add some, some visual contrast.
You want to make sure that you have your tweezers.
If you're if you're that style spoons for for placement or as
they say God's tweezers, the fing the fingers on your on your
hands, right? So when you don't have tweezers,
you could use God's tweezers and that'll make sure that you could
put things where they belong. So general advice when it comes
to plating, make sure you have deliberate intent.
Make sure that It on the plate, has a purpose, make sure that
you have a lot of contrast of color and variety.
Make sure that there's textures on there.
Make sure that it all makes sense.
Make sure it's beautiful. Make sure you wipe the plate
before it goes out. Very cool right now is to do
natural style plating, right? You'll see a lot of a lot of
food with a lot of fresh herbs picked herbs like that.
So, you want to make sure the herbs that you're putting on
their fresh, maybe you're holding them in a little
container of ice water. Or maybe you've compressed them
in the cryovac machine with ice water prior to keep them
vibrant, whatever the case may be, Those are the things that
you should be doing, to make sure that everything looks nice
looks fresh and plated beautifully because I know I've
said this before in chefs, PSA taste is more important than
plating and it still is, but plating a second, and it is
important. People do eat with their eyes
first. They, you need to make sure in
today's world, at least, right? Food is very Instagram, double.
So, you want to make sure that your food is Instagram, mobile
and people are looking at and say, wow, that looks beautiful.
And and and then they taste and it's like, wow, not only, is it
beautiful, but it also tastes Think about the China that
you're using contrasting colors. If you have, you know, depending
on what you're going for, maybe you have like a very beautiful
piece of William Edwards style, bone china, or something like
that with the gold rim and then you have something, you know,
kind of high low as they say. You have this beautiful
beautiful golden plate and then you put, you know, tater tots
with black truffles on it or something like that.
So, again, have fun with it. Have it make sense, but whatever
you do. Again, last piece of advice,
whatever you do, Make sure you have a story.
It's deliberate and it's intentional and you're not just
winging it. I'll save that story for another
day about how I got out of some trouble just by telling a good
story and get the job. So anyway, long story short, I
could talk about plating at length, make sure you use the
right plate. Make sure you have deliberate
intent with everything that you're doing, make sure it's big
sure it's tasty. Make sure it looks good and
quite honestly, look at all the beautiful food on social media,
right? Natural plating, you know,
follow the best chefs. I'm you look at all the, all the
new plating Trends as they come out.
Get inspired. I won't say steel.
Because last time I got in trouble because everyone was
saying, I'm talking down to chefs, we're saying steel, but
get inspired and learn about that learn from other chefs that
incorporate your own style into it.
Want to thank our sponsors, steel light, go visit still
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See you next week, hit the porno music.