Food as Art

Over the years great chefs have made names for themselves not by the taste of their food, but the design of it. The last few years have been a boom for food creatives. These people are using food as a medium for their art.
After eating at a few high end restaurants in Vegas I realized how entertaining this could be.

At a sushi place named sushi samba, they use the dishes as a visual as well as taste experience. The sushi was placed in shapes, the sauce was used to design the plate, and the lighting all accentuated this. It's funny that this reminded me of advertising.

Advertising has a purpose, to inform. But it can also be a form of entertainment. Creative people have known for years that if a message is engaging and fun, people will pay more attention to it. This is a lot like the creative movement in food at the time.

While this fusion of form and function is good, it can be overdone. Some places I went to tried to hard to obtain the "wow" factor and ended up making the taste suffer. This can happen with ads; try something too experimental and the originals goal could be lost.

The key to the equation is balance. Create something edgy that grabs attention, but remember what your overall goal is.