At the restaurant ILIS in Brooklyn, your smoked tomato and clam dashi arrives in a giant clamshell, sealed with beeswax and roped shut. At Naks in the East Village, bites of beef tartare on crisped beef fat are ferried to your table on a cow horn.
The post-plate era of fine dining is in full swing. Chefs at influential restaurants around the world are sending out food on surfaces like a pink silicone tongue, a bird’s nest, a gilded picture frame and an egg-shaped porcelain pedestal.
They’re the most extreme of several new twists in plating — the art of arranging food for maximum visual appeal that can define a chef’s work and help her win Michelin stars.
French tradition long dictated the “clock rule”: Place protein and sauce at 6, vegetables at 2, starch at 10, all on spotless white porcelain. When the Japanese-influenced nouvelle cuisine movement took off in the 1980s, chefs began removing heavy sauces and tidying up the food underneath.