The art of food plating

Eating is an experience for all the senses, one that implores diners to discuss your food and keep coming back to relive it. The secret to this success is with a set of tools that lets chefs unleash their creative vision, produce various textures on the plate and create a wow factor. A variety of visual factors, such as the colour and balance of the elements on a plate, can influence a diner's perception of, and response to, food. Recently, researchers interested in the aesthetics of food have started to assess people׳s overall preferences when it comes to the visual composition of food on the plate, and the impact that this may have on the consumption experience. The visual appeal of food has been, and will always be, an important matter to entice the appetite, ultimately enhancing the flavours of culinary creations. While chefs rely mostly on their intuition and expertise to plate their dishes, researchers suggest that studying food presentations under the lens of psychology and sensory science could give precious insights to the so far empirical, art of plating. The research shows that principles borrowed from the visual arts can, to a certain extent, be applied to plating.