What are your thoughts about the importance of presentation?

Does it matter to you at all, only in certain settings (cooking for others, for a special events) or at all times?

presentation is very important. if you just slop some food on a plate its not very appetizing. how you perceive the food affects how it will taste to you. now, just how far you take presentation can vary, but it definitely shouldnt be just slopped down on the plate.

Nope, I don't do anything more than clean drips off the edge of the plate, regardless of whether I cook just for myself or guests. I think my food looks fine looking exactly like what it is: food.

If you cook professionally and have to justify your wages and the restaurant's prices, then you can be as pretentious as you want to be, of course.

it could be said that a meal is 80% experience and 20% food.

when you are planning a meal that you hope people will remember for years to come, presentiation can really make or break that.

It could also be said the other way around

IMO food quality is way more important than presentation. As long as it doesn't look aweful, i'm happy. Although some of my favorite foods look just terrible.

nice looking crap will still taste like crap.

but you could take the same good quality food, and on one plate just plop it down haphazardly and on another arrange it nicely, and not only will people prefer to eat the one that tastes nice, if they tasted both, they would probably perceive it as tasting better than the other, even though they are actually exactly the same. its similar to feeding kids and getting them to try new things. if you tell them 'here, have some of these yucky vegetables', theyre not as likely to like it, if they are even willing to try it at all. give them the same vegetables and tell them 'mmm, yummy, here try some of this' and not only are they more likely to try it, theyre more likely to like it.

like i said previously, though, how far you take presentation depends on your purpose in eating. if youre just eating for sustenance, just the basics like wiping the plate and not throwing things on randomly is enough. if you really want to wow your senses, then its going to take more than just that.

That pretty much sums up much of the american "cuisine", aka 'food is an afterthought.' It's working out splendidly...



I don't know how many meals you have cooked in your life, but I've cooked quite a few and 'experience' or 'memorability' have never even entered my mind. Taste, nutrition and frugality are the values that I learned to cook by, but I learned cooking from my mother, who learned cooking from my grandmother, who learned cooking from my great-grandmother, and so on.

I've been very fortunate to have had delicious, nutritious, home cooked food to eat virtually every day of my life but you know what? I don't remember any particular meal, why would I?

Well, except maybe that one time when my uncle got fed up with the neighbor's pigeons eating all the chicken feed in my great-aunt's backyard, so he set up some cages... The following Sunday, the extended family got together at my grandma's for roasted pigeons... Yeah, that was truly memorable. I was just a little kid then and I still remember that, but you just can't manufacture that kind of experience...

This post was edited by aliquis on Nov 20 2013 08:40pm

experience, not presentation



experience, not presentation


presentation is a part of ones experience, but so is whether or not the person liked what they ate.

when you differentiate between 'experience' and 'food', that takes food part out of the experience. otherwise whats the difference? it should just be 100% experience then.

Agreed, alot of times people eat with there eyes