The presentation of food in fine dining restaurants usually involves the creation of an extraordinary visually interesting and attractive item on the plate and the design of the plate itself is part of the visual spectacle (some chefs involve themselves with the design and production of their restaurant’s ceramics). It isn’t unusual to see diners glancing at each other when a dish is presented with near-wondrous expressions on their faces and whispered words of amazement and pleasure (if the chef has been successful in achieving his/her visual goal). I’m still surprised how positively diners react to that old visual standby of wafting clouds of liquid carbon dioxide. Presentation of food is certainly a visual art in the hands of the right person.
But I do not want to talk about that side of the art of food, rather the non-edible aspect of it which seems to have been coming to the fore in the past few weeks during this infernal lockdown (I’m not complaining about it, I for one do not want my latest visit to a restaurant to turn to be my last meal if the virus is lurking there).
Chefs and restaurant owners seem to be turning to art to keep their presence in the public eye and tell us what they are up to to prepare for a new way of dining out. Take for instance the splendid cartoon depicted above which has been used by Craft Dining Rooms to remind us that the restaurant is still here and doing its best to make its diners safe for when the moment comes for reopening. A simple yet easily recognised rendition of the restaurant’s entrance and its outdoor pods (about which I felt very cynical when they first appeared last year but now they seem like an incredibly clever idea) executed in a chic style which reminds me of cartoons of the 1970s.
And Kray Tredwell, clearly champing at the bit to get his new restaurant, 670 Grams, swinging its doors open to its first customers, has adopted an anarchic, eye-catching motif which clearly says everything about what he wants to achieve with his food and which reminds me of a cross between a Jackson Pollock-inspired plate of food by Michael O’Hare and the cartoons of Ralph Steadman.
Brad Carter of Carters Of Moseley too has been exploring art in his communications with customers. A few weeks ago a colourfully cosy cartoon of his restaurant by night bathed in a reassuring warm light was used in email sent to his customers and he has also been using some very accomplished photography to promote his weekly programme of selling high quality ingredients linked to instructions on how to prepare it to create a Carters-style meal.
The artist Henry (so his mother named him, she being English) Toulouse-Lautrec, famous more perhaps for his portraiture of alcohol drinking than food consumption itself, is a character who indisputably has no links with The West Midlands but was pleasingly suitably hedonistic and epicurean for modern fine diners and gourmands to identify themselves with (though not to the extent that they should aim to expire from a combination of alcoholic liver disease and syphilis as did Henry). But in a discussion of Art and Food he is worthy of a mention even if his favourite English restaurants were to be found in London rather than the nation’s workshop.
TL, from a highly privileged background, similar to a lot of today’s Labour politicians or denizens of Moseley, was sent vast amounts of food from his rural family and enjoyed preparing it to make lavish repasts. He recorded his recipes and planned to publish them in a book but was thwarted by rotting away at the age of 36. Maurice Joyant, his art dealer, discovered the recipes after his death and subsequently published them. A lavish and beautifully illustrated edition in English was published in 1966.
His recipes were not necessarily for the faint-hearted - such not-now-to-be-tried recipes as heron grilled over a vine (unlikely even to surface in the rock and roll blackness that is The Wilderness) and a Fresh squirrel dish come to mind. And the chef at Pulperia (if it ever opens properly) might have his or her mind boggled by steak à la Toulouse which to be cooked to perfection requires a vine-wood fire and three tranches of steak, all smothered in Dijon mustard, and then piled on top of each other and grilled together on the vine-wood fire until the edges of all three are blackened at which point the outer two steaks are discarded. The middle steak should then be perfection personified.
TL rarely ate in Paris restaurants as he enjoyed the food he prepared himself rather more but when he crossed La Manche and stayed in London he enjoyed dining out at restaurants including the Café Royale where he met Oscar Wilde whose tastes were equally Epicurean and The Criterion but the place at which he most liked to dine was Sweeting’s, a noted fish restaurant. His greatest delight there was Skate wings with Black butter and he wrote joyous letters home praising the dish.
It’s interesting that TL was able to derive such pleasure from dining out in England - it rather flies in the face of the long-standing tale that English food has always been poor to dire.
The English edition of Toulouse-Lautrec’s book, The Art of Cuisine, is exquisite and a must for any food lover’s bookshelves. Like many dishes presented at our West Midlands fine restaurants the book is a visual delight first and then the rest follows.
I think that our restaurant owners and chef patrons could pursue the visual arts more - TL-style or otherwise - gay (in the old sense of the word) and bold and colourful in presenting themselves to the hesitant diners of Birmingham as they try to draw them out of their secure homes back into their dining rooms. They’ve made a start but there must be some furloughed TL-wannabe artists out there who could help to boost a rocket-propelled take-off for our dining out trade.
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| At the Café La Mie, painted c.1891 |
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| Monsieur Boileau at the Café, 1893 |
Food on a plate as art is principally uniquely gustatory and olfactory but our first reaction to it is usually visual - as art it is the culinary equivalent of painting. But one special area of food presentation which should be mentioned is patisserie which in itself is a form of sculpture. So I am pleased to see that the marvellous Mary Ashman (Maz) the baker and Dalvinder Cheema (Dali) the decorator here in remote West Heath, have found ways of continuing their business during Lockdown (what an annoying piece of terminology) by home delivery not only of their exemplary cakes but also afternoon teas.
Cuisine as art - you need sculpture in your gallery as much as paintings).
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