BREAST FEEDING
What it’s really like to be a human food platter
Lying on a dining table and wearing nothing but a flesh-colored thong, Miranda Robero can’t help worrying whether one of the crudités perched on her thigh might inelegantly roll off.
But the 24-year-old brunette from Bushwick keeps professional in her role as a living food platter — a job she describes as “performance art.”
Robero, who also works as a fire juggler and gentlemen’s-club dancer, is one of eight so-called “human trays” at Brooklyn’s latest hipster fad, Lust, an “immersive, erotically charged dinner party” with tickets costing between $90 and $140 a pop.
“I definitely feel empowered,” Robero told The Post during a recent Friday-night event, where more than 200 hungry souls feasted on finger food from her near-naked body. “I feel like a goddess.”
She was certainly a crowdpleaser. Munching on a lettuce leaf, self-described pleasure-seeker Lisa, who withheld her last name for professional reasons, declared: “Eating off another woman is very sexy, very sensual.”
Lust, which began in February 2016, is the brainchild of artist and performer Abby Hertz, 33, who hosted her most recent extravaganza at a converted industrial warehouse on Bushwick’s Troutman Street.
“I want to teach people the idea of connecting sensually without engaging in sex,” she said, adding that no actual sex takes place at Lust. “One of my inspirations is the Japanese fetish tradition of
nyotaimori, in which you eat sushi off the body.”
Robero, as with all the human trays, must take a shower within an hour of assuming her place on the table, wearing just a nude thong. A “food artist” then skillfully adorns her with fare — in this case, vegetarian nibbles, including bite-size pastries, asparagus and leafy herbs.
But cleansing isn’t the only prep work that’s required: Next, Robero falls into an almost meditative state as guests pluck food from her body.
“My favorite part is the surrender — not having to check my phone or worry about what’s going on because I am, quite literally, here to serve,” she said. The crowd at Lust consisted mainly of millennials (many of whom identified themselves as “bi-curious” or “sex positive”) with a sprinkling of Gen Xers. There were burlesque shows — including a ropebondage demonstration and a “human candelabra” featuring a nude woman being strategically covered in dripping wax.
Depending on the personality of the living platter, conversation with diners is either flirty or kept to a minimum — “to preserve the mystery,” said the more introverted Robero. She has never had a guest overstep the mark and fondle her and has trained herself not to flinch when someone plucks food from her private parts — whether they use their hands or their mouths.
Posing while adorned with food pays between $200 and $400 per two-hour stint. Right now, Robero toils as a naked tray just a handful of times a year, noting that she could make a living in the role only if she did it two to three times a week — and there’s just not that much work out there for human dinner plates.
As Hertz pointed out, it takes a certain type of person to do this well.
“What makes a good platter is [someone] with really good energy, really positive and who actually enjoys it,” she said. “I don’t want somebody that is like, ‘When is this going to end?’ but somebody who is more into tantra and meditation.”
And, yes, Robero does get turned on while being a plate. “All of my senses are heightened when I’m lying down in this vulnerable state,” she said. “The sensation when people grab food off my body is very satisfying and arousing.”
The sensations when people grab food off my body is s arousing. —“Human tray” Miranda Robero