What makes food look good?

When it comes to plating food, what makes it look good?

As it turns out, there are many, many factors influencing the beauty of that painting, and there are many, many factors influencing the beauty of a photograph, or a food presentation. The big underlying
principle is the principle of  ‘UNITY’.

This is a dish plated by a beginner culinary student.

Many things can be said about this plate of food, but let’s just say that it looks… unprofessional.

I know how to plate my food. But at that point I wasn’t really sure, as a chef
instructor, how to provide my students with the tools they needed to make
successful, professional presentations, other than showing them how I would do
it.

So I became interested in food design and I realized something peculiar. While
there is much literature on interior design, painting or photography, there is
absolutely nothing out there explaining how to plate food once it has been
prepared. In other words, ‘my food is done, how do I plate it now”?

I then started to think about what makes good photography, and what makes a good
painting, and I realized that the ‘rules’ dictating the aesthetics of an art
painting or photograph are the same as the ‘rules’ I was using to plate my
food.

There are many, many rules to obey if you want to plate good looking food. But there
is one rule, the absolute, overriding principle behind every visual art, and
that is the principle of UNITY.

Without ‘unity’, no design will ever look complete.

How to define ‘unity’?.. Well, we humans respond very well to it. We like ‘unity’. It’s what makes it feel complete. It’s you standing in front of a fine artwork in some international museum, and you look at the painting and you don’t really know why but you feel good about looking at it. It all feels ‘united’.

From ‘unity’ depends a bunch of satellite concepts such as composition, color, trend, texture, focus
& emphasis, support (the plate), simplicity, and many, many others. All that big puzzle is also a delicate balance. For instance, if I plate my food in such a way that I include a lot of these factors, but lack color, it is fair to say that my plate of food will look like it lacks something; it will feel incomplete.

As in painting or photography, the overall beauty of the end result depends on the interaction between all those concepts. Some presentations will have more colors than others, or more texture, some will be very simple or more complex, but once balanced, the sum will result in something we respond well, something we like, and that is ‘unity’.