Young Potter, RE: Pottery For Chefs
For the past ten years I have been working closely with some of the country’s top chefs. I have listened to their visions and concerns involving everything from sauce pooling to poetry. Plating is a general term and includes a lot more than plates. Here are a few of the things that I have picked up and wished I would have known starting out.
The function of your work depends largely on the vision of the chef. Look closely at the food and the plating style of the chef. If they plate in lines, radially or stacked it will inform the look and shape of the plate. Chefs will tell you what they don’t like, listen. If a chef uses thin sauces I need to keep the floor of the plate as flat as possible and roll the rib in to center just a hair to make sure it doesn’t lift in drying. If the chef stacks food and changes up levels I might bring the lip of the plate up to establish a higher framing or lay the lip flat to give the food more impact depending largely on the attitude of the chef. If the plating is intricate I may go for a very thin edge or eliminate the edge all together by making a pillow plate. This for me is one of the most rewarding things about what I do, making things function aesthetically. The idea that soup bowls need to drain to a spoon sized center and having saucers hold a spoon safely and still allow you drink from the cup, or making sure that cups and mugs have a foot to keep the heat off of wooden tables. These can be important too.
We may think of our pots as works of art but when you are making dinnerware for a chef the pots become the chefs tools. A good tool is something that you love to use and that you find functions well for you. Dishes however are handled by the wait staff, the dishwasher and the restaurant patron. They should work for everybody to some degree. The diner’s experience should be memorable and enjoyable and specific to the restaurant. If the diner has too many similar experiences somewhere else they won’t remember the restaurant, change it up. The wait staff needs to be able to carry the plate, set it down and pick it up to get it back to the dishwasher. If the plates are awesome looking but the wait staff fumbles to pick it up or can only carry one because of the weight, you have a problem. The dishwasher should be able to wash it and get it back to the line without breaking it. The chef however, uses the plate to control the temperature of the food and how much aroma gets to the table as well as how the diner sees and interacts with their food, which makes it pretty important.
The stance and color of a plate on the table can establish the mood. Colors should compliment the decor and the food. A bright color in a neutral room looks very different than the same color in a brightly decorated room. If you are using one of the primary food colors on the plate, it would compliment the food more by being slightly muted or having a significantly different texture. Pick a color that compliments the room and the food. Pay attention to the lighting at the table and how the color changes at night at that restaurant. Think about the table color and texture before making the color decisions. The stance of the plate on the table is done with the rim and the foot. You can make the stance heavy “down and dead” as Peter Volkos used to say, clear through the spectrum to “life and lift” which is more traditional. If you want to make it lively you can tuck the foot under and make the whole plate look like it is floating. If you want to establish a heavy or strong look you may not have a foot at all.
Variability in a plate is tricky but becomes more important as most chefs have seasonal menus and limited storage space in urban areas. They may need to plate dense pastas in fall and winter and salads in the spring on the same piece. Score points by giving some dishes a variety of elements to make them more useful. I try to give the chef a couple different lines or other elements that they can reference when plating. I may have a radial line inside the foot line. If it is overfilled from that line with a salad you don’t notice it until you are done with the food. If the chef has a special small coarse that needs a big frame the inside line will draw the eye in and make the plating look tight with a big frame, pay attention to the proportions of these.
Storage is important and should be considered more with the work horse pieces, these are the pieces that are used for the base of the menu and the chef will need lots of these. If you have 200 of the same plate in a restaurant and they don’t stack right your name will be part of a long drawn out profanity when the restaurant is slammed and a stack tips over. Of course you can’t make everything stack but if it should, it had better.
Most chefs spend a lot of time in the restaurant and great plates can have a huge impact. They will look at the same plate, hopefully, 20–40 times a night if they are busy. They will have them for years. You only have to look at a manufactured plate one time to know everything about them and this can bore the crap out of anyone. Pay attention to the details when you are making things. From the forming of the pot to the trimming and glazing I try to see the piece as an individual. With every pot that I make I am trying to improve. Certainly the plates may look the same from a step away but every little detail that is put into a handmade piece should be considered. Pay attention, if you aren’t engaged in what you are doing it will show. I try to leave in details that tell the story of the making and highlight the unique attributes of clay as long as they are interesting. Having a healthy respect and admiration for your materials and process becomes evident in the final piece. Chefs are inspired by change as much as any artist. They will notice the differences in each plate. Sometimes they welcome a challenge and its my job just to make something really interesting. That is why I love working with them.
