Just like your wardrobe, food is highly subject to fashion and trends. I’m suspecting that most of us today wouldn’t normally dress in psychedelic outfits and platform boots to our next meeting in town, or go out to dinner dressed like this:

Or like the following picture, even if I suspect the CL readership to possibly have a penchant for unconventional fashion:

: John Travolta

Likewise, chefs follow trends and try their best to stay away from a plate of food that looks like it’s 1977. Some even wouldn’t get caught dead plating stuff from last summer!

Take a look at the pictures of the dishes below and tell me if they belong to one of Paris or Chicago’s trendiest restaurant, or if they definitely have a certain “Saturday night fever” feel to them:

Right, I thought so! Pretty horrendous food, isn’t it?

But make no mistake about it. At one point, most people, and that could probably be your grand-parents, parents, or even you, went totally crazy about how cool this food actually looks. It seems, today, quite unimaginable.

So food presentation, like fashion, evolves. Who decides that? Well, marketers might tell you that demand (clients) creates offer (chefs). I think it’s a chicken and egg story. One thing for sure is that chefs, a little like haute-couture designers, remain receptive to what their clients demand, and offer their creation to the culinary world. Today, chefs like Grant Achatz (Chicago), Ferran Adria (Spain), Michel Bras (France) or Pierre Gagnaire (France) among others, are the force that pushes the canons of culinary arts design forward.

Not only does food “fashion” evolves; It also actually evolves quite fast. The frankenfoods you saw earlier date back from circa 1960-70. Look, even today, spectacular foams and spheres, for instance, already get a slightly tired air of deja vu, mainly induced by their ubiquity. What will happen to them in, say, 10 or 20 years?

And of course, culinary “coolness” is subject to fluctuating demographics, cultural differences and other factors. What looks coolest to someone in rural Iowa may look totally out of it to someone in New York City for instance, and vice versa.

What interests me here, however, is that for my plate to look like it has pizzazz, I’ll need to keep in mind 2 things. First, I need to make sure I know my audience (Iowa or NYC?) and two, I need to follow culinary trends relevant to my audience. Keep that in mind when you plate your food, people, because that’s important to remember.

LESSON FOR TODAY:

1. Know your audience

2. Be aware of culinary trends for your audience.

Chef Gui Alinat is a regular contributor to the CL Daily Loaf. He is also a local executive chef, blogger and food writer. You can check out his blog at www.chefgui.com.

This article appears in Jun 17-23, 2009.