CORNUCOPIA
For some chefs, food must appeal to both the taste buds and eye of the beholder
To compete in today’s culinary world, chefs not only seek to please the taste buds, but offer a feast for the eyes.
Food in the global culinary scene is getting more “stylish”. By this, we mean to say that several restaurants have started to dress their dishes up in order to make them more photogenic and thus, one may say, more fashionable.
From creative garnishes to plate-side accessories, the goal of these considered additions is to please both the eyes and the palette.
Among Michelin Star-rated establishments, family-run joints and even local hawkers, it is no secret that a meal can be made more memorable simply if it looks as good as it tastes.
Many of these restaurants further experiment with new ingredients to freshen up old combinations. All of this is an effort to stand out from the crowded and competitive culinary scene.
In Thailand, however, “stylish” food seems to be more limited to fine-dining restaurants. More often than not, these businesses serve cuisines from other countries like Italy and France.
Thai cuisine still depends heavily on homemade, tried-and-tested staple dishes. In several cases, one restaurant will specialise in serving one dish. At the end of the day, you cannot blame them. Clients still come, and hawkers are not interested in fixing something that isn’t broken anyway.
Expertly trained chefs, however, constantly try to think up new ways to dress up their offerings.
Unfortunately, these beautiful and inventive dishes, conjured up from an array of cooking cultures, are usually limited to those who have deep enough pockets to match the sky-high prices of this food.
In contrast, Thai fine-dining restaurants found overseas tend to opt for the homemade approach. Going the stylish route would likely confuse clients as many of them are unlikely to be familiar enough with Thai cuisine to appreciate the flair of Thai fusion food.
The most experimental sights one can find in such restaurants are pineapple fried rice — stuffed inside a real, hollowed-out pineapple — and a pioneering cocktail umbrella placed on top of the dish to complete the tropical look.
Stylish food may be especially noticeable now, but “fashion-savvy” servings have been part of Thai history for centuries.
Like many of the aesthetically noteworthy things in Thailand are, the origins of such dishes are royal.
Serving food to the Thai royal family has always been taken seriously. Generations of recipes have been passed down from one royal cook to the next, and have been used in several royal places over the years.
Besides actual taste, royal recipes are usually made with aesthetics in mind. Intricate decorations and garnishes are common with these dishes. An example of this includes the traditional Thai art of fruit carving.
Historians say the practice dates back to the 14th century when the country was living under the Sukhothai dynasty, which lasted nearly two centuries.
Legend has it that one of the Thai kingdom’s nine kings had a made who impressed the royals by carving a flower pattern into a watermelon, which was used to decorate her lantern during the Loy Krathong celebrations.
The king has said to be so impressed with the lantern that he started encouraging all Thai women to learn how to carve fruit — a message that may not sit will with today’s more gender-equal norms.
The enchanting story has had a longstanding influence on Thai customs. Traditional fruit carving has been integrated into school curricula in Thai and, in some cases, international schools as well.
One can also see these fruit carvings at traditional Thai weddings, auspicious occasions and other events in which Thai catering is available.
These carvings can beautify any dish, from your run-of-the-mill made-to-order gra prao (basil stir-fry) to extravagant feasts attended by businessmen looking for an extra touch of luxury to please their foreign clients.
However, while they are technically edible, it’s not often that people actually eat the decorations, since the outer skin of the fruit is frequently used to make the carvings, making them most unpleasant for the palette.
Perhaps this explains why fruit carving hasn’t caught on as much as, for example, using fondant to decorate cakes, which is indeed quite edible.
Other common practices in Thai cuisine include making plates out of banana leaves or coconut shells. Edible garnishes do exist, but they are often limited to placing dill, cabbage or string beans in their raw, original form alongside various Northern Thai dishes or salt-grilled fish.
It becomes up to the eater to follow the tradition of cutting the spice out of these dishes with the vegetables, or setting the delicate dill branches aside to focus on the main ingredients of the dish.
Nevertheless, for those who truly admire the beauty of stylish food, from fruit carving to other forms of creatively decorated dishes, an attractive-looking dish is a perfect way to top off a dish.