The 6 Rules of Plating Used in Restaurants | Epicurious 101

I'm Ann Ziata, professional chef and culinary instructor,

and today I'm gonna show you

how to elevate your plating skills.

We'll be going over six techniques

to help you plate like a pro.

This is plating 101.

Your plate is your canvas.

Different foods belong on different plates.

On my left side here is a big serving of pasta,

of spaghetti pomodoro.

It's in a soup bowl, so it looks very cramped and crowded.

There's nothing wrong with this. It could look better.

So on my right, I have a variety of dishes

that you might have at home.

I'm starting here with a wide shallow bowl.

Already, it looks bigger, more expansive, more relaxing.

It has a little bit of a slope to it.

It can hold pasta sauce really well.

I have tongs here.

You could also use a fork, you can use chopsticks,

but tongs are nice and big

and they're gonna help me create some shape here.

Just give a little pull.

So I have a plate wipe here.

It's just a paper towel or a napkin

with a little bit of water to it.

We use these in every professional kitchen, making sure

that the plate leaves the kitchen gorgeous.

We're gonna add some extra touches

that weren't included in the first one.

We're gonna add a few garnishes.

This is gonna add more contrast to the dish as well.

I have some Parmesan cheese here and I have a microplane.

I'm just gonna move the cheese in one direction.

For our basil garnish, we just have some fresh basil here

and then let's just place a few more artistically around.

So looking at the two side by side,

the one that I plated, you get a nice height from it,

you can see more of the pasta.

It's more inviting.

This, we don't really have a clear focal point.

It's all kind of mushed together.

So when it comes to plating, it's all to serve the food

and make the food shine.

Contrast could be a difference of textures.

We have soft elements, crunchy elements.

These are things that we don't just taste

but we can visually see.

And then also contrast of colors is nice too.

Contrast is gonna make the dish visually more interesting.

It's going to make it easier

for your eye to distinguish the items on the dish.

The first bowl I have here is a bowl

of butternut squash soup.

There's nothing wrong with the soup,

but it looks a little boring.

It's a little one-note.

Starting with a nice empty bowl, I have my soup here

and I wanna leave about an inch or so at the top.

It gives the soup a little bit of a frame.

Add a little creme fraiche to the soup.

It's gonna add a contrast of color

with a little white in the middle,

and it's also gonna add a little contrast of flavor.

A couple pieces of crouton here.

We're adding something that's dry and crunchy

to something that is very smooth and pureed.

Some chopped chives,

now we have a fresh green element contrasting

with something that's been cooked.

We have our two dishes here side

by side we can compare the contrast of.

When your eye has a place to go, you see more contrast.

It's going to look fresher,

so it makes the croutons look crunchier,

which is really cool.

Height is an important element in plating.

Not every dish needs to look like a little pyramid,

but we do wanna add a little bit of height to it just

so we can see everything in the dish.

Adding height to your plate will make it look more dramatic.

It makes it look more elegant,

and it's gonna make it look more three dimensional.

So here we have a salad.

First, it just looks very messy.

There's no focal point for my eye to go to.

There's no visual direction for my eye to follow.

First thing we're gonna do, we start

with a nice clean plate.

We're gonna toss our lettuces.

And here we have some lovely chicories,

we have some radicchio, some endive.

The chicories here, they add a lot more color to the dish

and you can see a lot more contrast as well

and the shape is really interesting and fun,

whereas the spinach here, it can have its time and place,

but it looks a little flat.

The greens I have here are going

to hold their shape better too over time.

They're not gonna wilt as easily as spinach will.

I have a little vinaigrette here,

just a little balsamic vinegar, olive oil, salt and pepper.

Gently add a little bit to the leaves.

On our first plate, the dressing,

it looks like it was just kind of poured on top,

which means it's not gonna get evenly dressed.

If we're pouring the dressing on the salad,

it's also gonna flatten it as well

and we are going for height here.

Along with them, I'm gonna toss in some crushed olives.

So we're doing it a little differently

than the original salad,

which has it diced up into nice bite-sized pieces.

We want a little more drama for this plate

so the best way to add drama other than height is

having something a little oversized.

So I have these two wedges of kabocha here.

This is gonna give a little base

for the salad to build off of.

If you're not using kabocha squash, a cauliflower steak

or a large piece of broccoli, place our leaves down.

I don't have to use all of them.

I don't wanna overcrowd it,

so I'm just using what I need.

Right now, I think it needs a little more green in there.

And it should look pretty natural.

I once had a chef tell me

that leaves should look like fallen leaves,

like they just fell from a tree very naturally.

So these are some really thinly shaved radishes,

quick pickled onions.

So this looks a lot more colorful, it looks more even.

It's a really attractive fuchsia color.

They become a little bit more tender to eat.

They're not this bite of raw onion,

which in this salad it's just gonna overpower

and it's very easy to make too.

We have our feta here.

I'm just gonna use my hands to crumble it.

Again, we wanna make it look very natural, very elegant.

I'm just kind of filling in around,

trying to make it a little even, but not super symmetrical.

When you're doing things in a more scattered style, I like

to think more like a kaleidoscope

where it's actually the same image repeating over and over

and it looks like this big beautiful design

and it's a little like messy in a way,

but it's a very organized mess

that it makes it aesthetically beautiful to look at.

We have our pistachios.

In the original salad, the pistachios are left whole.

You don't really get to see their pretty green interior,

so I prefer to use raw pistachios with a little bit

of a chop on them just

so we still get that fresh, green, nutty flavor.

We see more of the color.

We have some mint leaves here. Gently tear them.

And this is my kabocha salad,

and it is so dramatically different than the first one

that it's almost comical.

It's the same ingredients, it's the same elements.

We just transformed them just a little bit,

just a few tweaks to take something

that looks a little bit more pulled from your fridge

and something much more high-end celebratory

you could have at a special event.

You could make it if you're trying to impress someone,

you have your friends over.

Something you'd wanna take a picture of really.

What is negative space?

Usually it refers to any emptiness on the plate.

If the plate is too full, it's going to look cluttered.

We don't have a place for our eye to relax and to go to.

Adding negative space is gonna add contrast,

it's gonna add drama.

It's gonna give a way for things to pop

and give it more dimension.

So in front of me, I have a dish that's plated

with a pea puree, scallops and shallot chips.

There's no negative space. It looks bunched together.

I lose a lot of the shapes of the scallops

and even of the puree.

I think also this dish has a lot of circles in it,

which is very common in culinary arts where we love circles,

but sometimes I think they're overdone.

We wanna add more straight lines.

Right away, we have a pea puree.

It looks really lovely, fresh, green color.

It's contrasting.

This is a couple tablespoons worth.

I'm gonna do it a little off center.

It's just gonna be a little more interesting

and it's gonna give us more negative space.

I made a little dollop of the sauce

and I pushed down against the plate

so you can see the negative space in the sauce.

This is also gonna give us a little landing pad

for our scallops to live.

So I have the scallops here.

These are also presentation side up,

which is gonna look much more appealing,

whereas in this plating,

it looks like the presentation side is being hidden.

And we always are thinking about

when we're plating what we wanna show off,

and then also what we wanna hide.

You see a lot more of this crispy ring.

It looks very appetizing.

I'm gonna have them sit along the straight line,

this way, that they're not floating on their own.

It's gonna look more cohesive.

It's gonna look more dramatic.

It's the appropriate amount of sauce.

It's not too much, it's not too little.

Also, we have three here.

When there's two of something on a plate,

whether it's two scallops or two scoops of ice cream

or two whatever, they're gonna feel a little bit

in competition with each other.

Three, they're more balanced. They tell a story.

There's a beginning, a middle, and an ending,

and they're not just like one versus one.

So the shallots on this plate here, they're a little big.

They kind of hide the shapes of the scallop.

Here, we're gonna use some smaller pieces.

They're gonna add some nice straight lines

to the dish which we love

and just a little crispy element of contrast too.

For our last garnish, sliced scallions,

flavor-wise, this is gonna work with this dish,

which is a little kind of like a springtime fresh green

and this is gonna highlight that freshness

and kind of mirror it on a small level.

And also it has negative space, which we love.

We love to see little holes in food, little lacy patterns.

It's just very interesting and very pretty.

I decided to just do one ring

because there's a pile of the shallots

and I think one allows us to really take advantage

of the negative space of the scallion,

and it just looks nice and simplified.

This dish to me, really highlights the beauty

of negative space.

There's a lot of areas we can see underneath,

things we can see behind things

and we also have a lot of emptiness on the plate too,

which just gives our brain places to relax.

The first one looks a little bit more choked up, right?

Everything's kind of on top of each other,

and you kind of are losing a lot of the shapes,

a lot of the textures, because they're all just kind

of hidden in this one blur.

Negative space is going to allow your dish room to breathe.

It's going to provide more contrast, more balance.

It's going to make it much more visually interesting.

It's important to highlight the key ingredient

if you have an entree with a really nice focal point, right?

This is kind of the main event of the meal,

the main event of the dish.

In this case, our main event here is a steak.

We wanna highlight it but it's so special.

We don't wanna cover it in sauce.

We don't wanna pile a bunch of things on top of it.

And this plate here, this is very like TV dinner style

or kids' plate style at a cafeteria.

We're gonna take these exact elements

and we're gonna replate them

so it looks a little bit more fine dining.

The first thing we're gonna do is cut the steak.

I'm gonna slice it at a little bit of an angle

so we can really show off the inside of the meat

and it will lay a little bit more relaxed.

The steak sauce.

Chefs love to put sauces on the bottom of the plate

rather than on top of the food,

because this way, we can see the food.

The original plate here has a ramekin,

which can look really thought out

and looks a little intentional,

but in the end of the day,

it's just gonna get dumped anyway,

so it's just kind of extra clutter on the dish.

I am gonna do just a straight line

so it follows the length of the steak.

Just a little off center

so I have room for the vegetables next to it.

We want enough just so it looks like it's going

to not overpower the meat, but also not skimpy.

So now you can see here, the contrast of the inside

of the meat, the nice crispy crust.

Generous amount of sauce, but not too much.

Nothing's on top of it. Nothing's hiding it.

It looks inviting versus this steak,

you have to do a little work to kind of get to it,

and you're kind of hiding the doneness of the meat.

So we have our sides here.

We have some carrots and some broccoli rabe, roasted,

nice and crispy.

They're cut a little differently, right?

We have round cuts here that are just a little kind

of basic and boring, just a little like little logs,

but this is a nice roll cut on the carrots,

so you have a little bit more of a sharp line.

You have some angles.

You could see also the inside of the carrot.

Really lovely dramatic shapes here.

I'm gonna start with the greens on the bottom,

just a little bed, a nice alternative to spinach,

lovely, bitter, green.

Right away, we have a nice contrast of something

that is meaty and cooked

and something that is fresh and leafy.

Add some alternating carrots and broccoli rabe.

I'm putting them together rather than keep them separate

just because it should feel like one dish.

Everything should feel very cohesive

rather than like strangers at a party not talking

to each other.

Just making sure that there's contrast between the lines

of the steak and the carrots.

If they all look kind of parallel, it's going to clash,

but here, they're going in different directions,

which is gonna make it interesting.

When we look at the two side by side,

this one looks a little more ingredient

focused individually, there's not a lot of cohesion.

They're just kind of floating in space

and they have nothing in common.

But here, everyone is getting along,

just looks more exciting to eat.

The sauce is free and flowing,

which makes it look more relaxed, inviting, and fun.

When you highlight the key ingredient of the dish,

it makes it feel very special.

This is also the focal point of the whole dinner.

We really wanna make sure

that we are giving that the attention it deserves.

When it comes to plating, we wanna remember that it's an art

and we're just having fun.

And I've found that dessert is the course

where you can get away with having the most fun as a chef.

I'm telling you all my secrets, all the tips and tricks

that I use that I was taught

but at the end of the day, it's an art form

so use your own creativity, do what excites you,

do what you think is beautiful, make it your own.

To my left, we have a very classic s'mores,

roasted marshmallows, chocolate, and some graham crackers.

We're gonna take the same elements, deconstruct them,

and we're gonna also add some ice cream,

because for me, a real dessert has chocolate

and something frozen.

So these are graham crackers

that have been crushed into crumbs.

I'm gonna create kind of the ice cream as the focal point,

and then a bunch of lines that are directing us toward that.

So I'm gonna do a little bit off center,

a little crumb trail.

It's just like a teaspoon or so,

maybe a tablespoon at most.

I can make it a little cleaner

but I don't want it to look too fussy.

I wanna look like I've stumbled in the forest

and I see this little path

and I'm like, this is gonna lead somewhere delicious

all the way across the plate.

I think for this we can have a little fun

and touch the rims of the plate.

So I've got my straight line.

There's some few stray crumbs around it,

but I think it looks natural.

Then we are going to put a little chocolate sauce

on the plate.

So this is the same as the Hershey's, just melted down,

and I'm gonna make a little circle, a little dollop of it.

I'm gonna try not to make a mess across the plate,

something for the ice cream to sit on.

I have ice cream that's been cut into planks.

So what you can do is take a container of ice cream,

spread it into a turin mold,

or like a cake, like a square loaf pan

or you can cut it directly from the container it's in

into these nice squares.

It plays off of the shape of the chocolate

in the s'mores of the graham cracker.

It also adds more contrast.

We have some nice right angles here,

and a dish that has more circles on it.

I have a nice offset spatula,

so I'm gonna add my little square

of ice cream right on top of the chocolate

and we're gonna top it

with three little roasted marshmallows.

And that is your little fancier dinner party s'mores.

You can see this one is a little bit more opened up.

It's a little more abstract.

We have a little frozen ice cream.

It plays with similar shapes.

All the ingredients are mostly the same,

but it's just a little more fun.

With plating desserts and being creative,

there's really no rules.

It's gonna taste delicious. It's gonna look really fun.

Plating is definitely a skill

and it's something worth practicing

and kind of exploring with and creating your own style.

It's going to make all

of your dining experiences more elegant

and a little bit more special.

These little details make a huge difference

when it comes to presentation.