Beauty and The Feast

Stop placing so much value on pretty food

Within all the offerings laid bare by the culinary cosmos, I can think of one food item that has consistently fooled me through its deceptive aesthetics: Cakes. Cakes (by far) are the shallowest breed of pastry. They are the most immature and insecure member within the large family of baked sweets.

On the outside, they are often drenched with endless decorative accoutrements to please the eyes: white royal icing, colorful sprinkles, possibly an array of mouthwatering macarons. But cut open a pretty cake?—?and you will often find a dry, bland, spiritless figure underneath the facade. Before long, one usually needs to grab a glass of water while eating cake?—?just to provide some much-needed moisture for the disappointing experience.

This deceptive tendency (beautiful on the outside, bland on the inside) is baked within the personality of almost all cakes. But like all personalities, it usually originates from the parents (in this case, the patissier).

Patissiers tend to be a deceptive, insecure bunch. Maybe it is because many consider their craft to be more of a science?—?a performance of chemistry?—?rather than an art of passionate cookery. The legendary chef Marco Pierre White once said, “Cooking is a philosophy, not a recipe, unless it’s pastry, then it’s chemistry.”

It is this unsavory criticism that drives the pastry chef to overcompensate, and overly beautify their dish with too much make up?—?in order to somehow justify their worth in the culinary universe. Usually, the more colorful and extravagant a cake is on the outside, the drier it is on the inside. This is usually what we see in wedding cakes.

In Poor?Taste

This obsession with beauty in food is getting out of hand. But it is not just pastry chefs that do this. If we look at restaurants performing at the highest levels of gastronomic integrity, many of them seem to have this autistic insistence towards visual immaculacy.

Many Michelin starred chefs today use tweezers and pipettes when preparing a dish. They use liquid nitrogen, tiny edible flowers, even gold leaf flakes to beautify their cuisine. All of this for the sole reason of allowing you to eat with your eyes. To provide you with an amuse-bouche for your cornea. A sweetener for your sense of sight.

Although there is nothing inherently wrong with wanting to make things look pretty, there is no need to intensify this trend even further. It is getting rather silly. Rather childish. The bar on how popular a restaurant is should not be based on how ‘instagrammable’ their foods are. A restaurant’s quality should not be based on its theatrics and aesthetics.

Humble Pie

There is no doubt that the Michelin guide is partly responsible for the beautification and pomposity of food. Historically, the organization has strongly favored high-brow, bourgeoisie establishments as their idea of fine dining (you know?—?the type of restaurant that require of you a three-piece Armani just to get a table).

But lately, Michelin has loosened their grandiose ideals and awarded stars to much more rustic culinary establishments. Seven-table street food joints in Bangkok and rotisserie restaurants in Hong-Kong have been recognized for their authenticity and rusticity?—?despite their lack of culinary sophistication.

Some perceive Michelin as being cunning in giving away their stars to much simpler and humbler food joints. They say it is all a marketing plot to humanize the organization by providing a friendlier, more down-to-earth public image. Even if that is true?—?it does not matter. It is still a step in the right direction against the obsessive beautification of food. Everyone benefits from having a more diverse and egalitarian Michelin guide.

I was once dining at a rather fancy restaurant in South Jakarta. What I ordered exactly escapes me at this moment. If memory serves me right, there was duck confit (duck cooked in fat), along with a side of salad and grilled mushrooms, all drizzled very neatly with some form of mushroom dressing. The plate looked immaculate. Very instagrammable indeed.

But upon digging in, I remember thinking “I have never eaten food so bland presented so pompously.” That was about two years ago. The restaurant has since closed. I wonder why.