Restaurants go all out to present picture-perfect food

City-based 26-year-old techie Roopa D dines out at least twice or thrice a week and is often guilty of taking too many pictures before she gets to tasting the dish that’s before her. “I find it appealing when a restaurant makes the effort to present the food in an interesting manner. Even though I click many pictures during a meal, I post only a few images on social media when the dining experience stands out. But, it has become a habit of sorts to click a picture before I eat now,” she admits. It is people like her and thousands of other active social media users that restaurants are going all out to please. Any dish they send out of the kitchens is ensured it has an element of novelty — whether in the way it is presented, or the kind of crockery that is used.

For restaurateur Arasu Dennis, whose company AD Associates runs resto-bars in the city like Off the Record, Boats and Fat Monkey, food and drink offerings now must first be a feast to one’s eyes. “Years ago, one cared only if the food tasted well. But now, it must be pleasing to the eyes before a diner takes a bite. Almost everyone who comes to dine at our restaurants takes out his or her phone to click a picture before they eat. If it tastes good, then they go ahead and post it on social media. So, it has become mandatory for restaurants to keep up with the trend, and make sure their food and drinks pack a ‘wow’ factor,” he tellsDT Next.

For instance, the aluminium tiffin boxes his mother had packed her lunches in as a child, are back in trend to present Indian food, Arasu notes. “We’re always looking for crockery and cutlery that diners might not have seen before. At Off the Record, we present a cocktail called ‘moviegoer’, which actually comes in a popcorn box with the drink inside. We also serve piña coladas in scooped out pineapple, so that it’s fun and also nothing gets wasted. Restaurants now spend significantly on sourcing the crockery as well — the real mussel shells we serve our fried calamari in is worth Rs 5,000 each,” he shares.

Chef Kiran Charles, the culinary director at newly-opened gastro-pub Trippin Town, says diners now have more exposure to global fine dining trends through social media. “People observe that restaurants world over are not serving a pasta tossed in sauce as it is, but are making an effort to deconstruct the dish to make it more appealing. Visual aspects of how a dish is presented on the table matter a lot, as the advertising for restaurants which once happened through ads mostly occurs through social media posts now. When it’s a casual dining space, chefs are looking for quirky crockery and keep it minimalist when it’s fine dining,” he shares.

With street food making it to fine dining spaces, it is another added challenge for restaurants to stage them fit for Instagram. Chef Syed Ikramullah, who has curated the menus at The Cycle Gap resto-bar says even their kalakki on the menu is presented with finesse. “We picked out a nice bowl in which we’d present Chinese dishes for the kalakki. Since the dish is so common on streets, we make sure it pops in the crockery used. We also attempted to reflect the restaurant’s theme of ‘glocal’ in the crockery as well — there’s rustic wooden platters and ceramic bowls. Our drinks have also been experimented with a local touch, like adding a pouch to the drink kadala podu (bourbon drink infused with peanut and jaggery sauce) to hold a groundnut barfi,” he remarks.