AS DELICIOUS AS IT LOOKS
From left, Michael Maxxis, Bill Graham and Melanie Swerdan are the co-owners of El Cortez Mexican Kitchen & Tequila Bar. Maxxis, an artist and film director, takes a visual approach to food — creating the look of a dish before his chef tackles flavour.
When co-owner Michael Maxxis opened Edmonton’s El Cortez Mexican Kitchen and Tequila Bar, he put the plates before the food.
“I ordered a bunch of plateware before we had the menu because I wanted to force the chef’s hand,” said Maxxis, who is also a visual artist and film director. “I said, ‘This is how I want the tables to look, now you figure out how to (work the food) into it.’”
Maxxis’s intense focus on the look and feel of El Cortez has turned the Mexican restaurant into a stylish and engaging space where you can also get a great meal. It stands as a symbol of the effort — and hard cash — that many restaurateurs put into creating a table top that adds something unique to the dining experience.
Restaurant plates, glasses and flatware are as varied as the restaurants themselves. From the vintage, thrift-shop cups and mugs at the Blue Plate Diner, to the sleek white coupe-style bowls at the Hardware Grill, how restaurateurs serve food and drink reflects their style, confidence in plating, environmental stewardship and commitment to the community, as well as their wallets.
According to Troy King of Russell Food Equipment, local restaurants run the gamut, from selecting “chip and chuck” plates, bowls and glasses that ring in at a buck or two a piece, to higher-end choices at $40 to $60 a plate.
Cheap plates may suffice because restaurant owners “want to get the doors open and get the cash flowing, and maybe they can shift down the road,” says King.
“But that’s not a very environmentally sound choice. Why buy a plate that you have to replace 20 times when you can buy one that lasts five to seven years? Most that we sell have a lifetime guarantee on chipping. It’s an investment up front, but the china looks nicer, is of higher quality and lasts three to five times longer.”
Some restaurant owners, including Tricia Bell of Cavern, believe the vessel is critical to the integrity of the product. She sets aside $7 to $12 per piece for wine glasses and champagne flutes at Cavern, which specializes in wine and high-end cheese.
“I teach my staff to only touch the stem of the wine glass,” says Bell, whose tableware accounts for about 20 per cent of expenses. “If you touch the bowl, you are changing the wine. I want to make sure my product is showing at its absolute best. Flatware, tableware and glassware are a way to accomplish that.”
Bell spends $40 to $50 each on 100-per-cent natural slate slabs to hold her carefully curated international and local cheeses.
“My product is breathing, living, and it will become one with everything I put it on ... if you put it on plastic, it will taste like plastic after a while.”
Sometimes Russell Food Equipment, with thousands of items in its catalogues, can supply what a restaurant needs. But other owners such as Maxxis of El Cortez look farther afield for one-of-akind items.
“I put great emphasis on the visual experience that the customer has at El Cortez or Have Mercy — the colour palate, the textures,” he says. “I’m not from the restaurant business and so I haven’t taken a traditional approach.”
Some of Maxxis’s tableware choices have come via connections in the Los Angeles movie business, including Mike Flores, a real-life former gangster who went straight after serving time and now plays gangster characters in movies.
“When we first started the idea of having a tequila bar, we drove around east L.A. with (Flores) researching mom-and-pop shops, and discount stores. Every time I go to L.A., I bring back a box of plates.
“When you run a restaurant there is so much chaos and responsibility. The push is to simplify. But I don’t care. If we were doing something simple, we’d have a burrito shop with plastic chairs.”
Chef Tony Krause chose to enhance the menu at the 50-seat Privada Wine and Tapas in St. Albert with a small, extra selection of handmade stoneware bowls, plates and pitchers because he is passionate about the way his food looks, and about supporting the local economy. He paid $30 to $45 each, out of his own pocket, to buy the items from local potter and artist Brenda Danbrook.
“I wanted to be in total control of how a dish would come out, from what farm the food is grown at, to the design of the plate,” says Krause.
He met Danbrook at the farmers market and was impressed with her work and with her willingness to custom-create dishes based on Privada’s needs.
“We have tested our plating dishes on white bone china, and then on stoneware that Brenda has made for us, and it feels like a completely different dish,” he says in an email. “On Brenda’s plates, it has a warmer, more home-inspired feeling. On the white tableware, it just comes across as flat and cold.”
Troy King of Russell Food Equipment agrees with restaurateurs who value quality dinnerware. As a waiter for many years, King has polished thousands of glasses before arranging them carefully at the place setting. He’s put a lot of thought into what matters in a restaurant.
“Some operators are all about the food, and for others, it’s about the service ... But the tabletop plays to both of those. It’s the connection, where the servers met the food. It’s the meeting point between those two, and it’s very important.”