Elle A Seoul / Plating

Publication : Elle A Seoul

Date : September 2011

Title : Plating

The 7thepisode of easy and fun dining terminologies explained by witty men and women who studied together in the U.S.

Editor (E) : We'll have our dining talk with a new member starting from this month. Nice to meet you, our original member Chef Sangjun Paik from Culinaria and President Lucia Cho of KwangJuYo, a company which recreates traditional Korean pottery as lifestyle tableware. Somehow, peers of similar ages got together!

Lucia Cho (Cho): As a subscriber of Elle à Seoul, it’s my honor to be a part of this talk.

Sangjun Paik (Paik): She is a really good speaker. I think I’m going to fall behind. Haha.

E: No way, you came up with the topic for this month!

Paik: When I’m cooking, what I care the most about is plating. I’m that kind of person who doesn’t reach hands to food that doesn’t look good no matter how delicious they are.

Cho: When I first visited his restaurant, I was really surprised. To be honest, he looks a bit rough, but his plating was so beautiful. I expected them to be somewhat masculine like Spanish dishes.

Paik: I like cute and colorful things. I’m not satisfied with something not colorful.

Cho: Maybe it is because you are an optimistic person… Wait but the rainbow means something different… (a burst of laughter from everyone)

E: What are the principles that you must keep when it comes to plating?

Paik: The first thing I check when I visit a restaurant is the temperature of the plate. I check whether hot foods are served on hot plates and cold foods are served on cold plates. It is also forbidden to serve food that needs to be cut with knife on a plate with matte finish. It can create an unpleasant sound.

E: I think excessive plating is also problematic. It’s uncomfortable to have inedible things like flower on the plate.

Cho: When you go to a place like Noma, the world’s best restaurant, they only serve the food itself without any decoration. That requires demanding preparation though. Anyway, I think it’s a great way of plating because this lets you concentrate on the food and clearly reflects the restaurant’s organic concept.

E: It's also interesting to know that many of the world's famous chefs majored in architecture or art. Once I saw a dessert by Carme Ruscalleda which applied Mondrian's paintings and I later figured out that she was an art major, too.

Cho: If cooking is a technique, then how much genius imagination is involved is in the realm of art. In that sense, the chef needs to think of himself as an artist.

Paik: I’m not sure about other things, but I can say that plating is the chef’s domain after all. That’s what I do too. I can’t taste every single dish that is served, but I make sure that it is served as I displayed it. Even a slight difference is unacceptable.

Cho: An Executive Chef is like a conductor in an orchestra. Plating is the matter of the chef’s pride.

E: I think the server’s capability is as important as that of the chef’s.

Cho: That’s true. Servers have to eloquently explain the significance of each plate so that the person who eats the food can easily understand the message. Some restaurants have separated roles between people who cook and people who design the plate. But considering that plating is something that guides you through the order of eating and the harmony between foods, I think separating the roles isn’t helpful.

E: Some people don’t even know where and how to start or learn about plating.

Cho: That’s similar to questions like “how do you draw a picture?” As I said before, it’s the realm of self-expression, not technique.

E: That’s why there are so many copycats.

Paik: It's no different from copying someone else's recipe.

E: I agree. Was there a separate curriculum for plating at the school you attended?

Paik: No, we do learn about the basic structures, but you have to learn it on your own by looking at books and other resources. I'm a very spontaneous person, so if I feel like I can’t get it done, I just delete the dish from menu. On the other hand, no matter how good the plating is, I have no choice but to give it up if the preparation takes too long.

E: You must have been through a lot of failures, but is there a certain moment when you feel like you found the answer?

Cho: Thomas Keller once said, “If you feel satisfied with your plating, you will never be a good chef. Don’t think what you’ve done today is all you’ve got.”

E: Wow, that’s cool. Lucia, I’m sure you have a lot to say about tableware.

Cho: I think the container plays a very important role for dishes with a set frame like onion soup. I work at KwangJuYo so I do a lot of collaboration projects with chefs. There are so many different materials and colors when it comes to tableware. For example, whether it's white, celadon, glossy, matte, or they want it to be more coarse in texture… I think those picky chefs who take all of these into consideration are people with solid fundamentals about cooking.

Paik: It's true that good ceramic plates are visually enticing, but it can also impede plating if the plates are too beautiful. You may only see the container, not the food.

E: Maybe that’s why white porcelains are popular today.

Cho: In the past, food itself wasn’t attractive enough to be the main. That was why the dishes were colorful. But now everyone wants to see the food rather than the container.

E: Is there anything that we have to be careful about when we choose the containers for plating?

Cho: It should go well together with everything including the interior design and lighting. When the lights are dark, matte dishes turn out to be shinier. If you use highly glossy dish under bright lights, it looks even more luxurious too.

E: Lastly, let’s talk about Korean cuisine and plating. Most Korean foods have big portions, so I guess it’s hard to serve them in course.

Cho: One of my friends is a Brazilian chef and he also finds plating the hardest. Brazil has similar food culture with us, so he told me that it is really difficult to serve fine dining in Brazilian style.

E: I think that’s what’s hard about globalization of Korea cuisine. We don’t even have a good precedent to follow.

Cho: But put in a different way, we have a well-developed side dish culture. Technically, side dishes are also a dish and the idea of putting one food in one dish is the same. But we don’t really think about plating the side dishes. Korean chefs today tend to focus too much on Western techniques such as foam and powder. That leaves much to be desired.

E: So it’s all about preserving the tradition as well as expressing Korean cuisine in a stylish way. So now, let’s define what plating is. What is plating?

Cho: You set a concept, chose the ingredients, set the target, plan…I think it’s something similar to painting pictures and opening an exhibition with them.

Paik: I’ll call it the chef’s style.

E: Thank you! I’ll be looking forward to our next talk!