5 Simple Steps To Help You Plate Food Like a Pro

When you head to the lovely new fine dine restaurant in town, decked up in your best, you wait in anticipation for that lovely looking plate of food to be placed in front of you looking all fine and beautiful, you can’t wait to eat and figure out if it tastes as good as it looks. Beautifully plated food has become part of the experience of eating at a high-end restaurant.

Presentation is now key to the entire process of cooking food. You don’t just cook a delicious meal and pile it up on the plate. You carefully and artistically try to plate it, and if you have tried it before, you know that it always doesn’t come out the way you want it to. Thanks to the folks at FineDiningLovers we have stumbled upon a few tips to help you plate like a pro. 

Additionally, the team at Chef Steps.com have a few handy tips for you for plating and presentation, take a look at their video for more expert tips:

Tracy Torres, a seasoned fine dining professional with a wealth of experience including a stint at Cafe Boulud, has teamed up with FastCoDesign.com to help you master the art of plating. 

In a simple step-by-step guide, she explanations some practical tips to follow, applying the one founding philosophy of “delighting the customer through variety and transparency.”

The chosen dish for the plating lesson is Pan Roasted Pork Chop with Garlic Sausage, Polenta, Stone Fruit, and Pecans.  There is nowhere to hide with the plating of this dish Torres professes, “it says, pork, peaches, onions, pecans” . 

Have a look at the simple steps below and the next time you stand in front of an empty white plate it won’t look so formidable anymore. 

Prepare all your components – think about texture, colours and preparation methods.

Start with a simple dollop of creamy polenta, Torres uses it as a stabaliser at the base of the dish, rather like a bulky layer of glue. The crucial point, she reminds us, is to think about white space. Plating off centre respects the photography rule and law of thirds. She then adds a few drops of peach puree around the polenta.

Place the sear on top of the polenta as they are meant to be eaten together.

Continuing to fill the white space with carefully spaced colour, texture and taste. Sausage pairs with the acidic fruit puree. Plums, spring onions and pecans are added more casually to the plate.

Now, for the final saucing of the dish. Torres explains this is a more rustic touch to compliment the big brown chop.