Does plating matter?
The waiters approached as if bearing relics. The dish was introduced in low, reverent tones: provenance, technique, a meditation on texture. It arrived centred on a vast white plate, a small island of ingredients arranged with geometric restraint. Droplets of sauce were placed in disciplined orbit. It was less a course than a composition. My partner, JW, watched carefully. She ate it without comment. I looked up for a verdict. Her expression conveyed the diplomatic neutrality of a minor trade partner declining a major treaty. “Meh,” it said. For JW, raised in the back corridors of her grandfather’s Cantonese restaurant, the first question of any dish is not how it looks but how it arrives. Does it steam? Does it announce its birth in fire? In the Cantonese canon, temperature is not an accessory but a moral condition. The difference between a home kitchen and a restaurant kitchen, she insists, is not taste but heat. Industrial burners roar to life in seconds. Iron woks, heavy and bl...
