the aesthetics of buffet

DISCLAIMER: I'm weird; be warned.

So I went to a buffet a few weeks back and thought about how I pick food. How do you pick food? Do you go for entrees and then mains and then dessert like a civilised person? Or, because you've starved yourself silly to gorge on the abundance of food at the buffet you just grab whatever's nearest and get back to the table to start nomming like a madman?

I decided a while ago to make sure that my plates were as aesthetically pleasing as possible, while also having an acceptable level of palatability. It's not overly hard, but it's pretty nice when you make something that looks good. Buffets don't always have the nicest foods, so making it look nicer seems better.

I haven't included ALL of my plates, because there was also hotpot (yeah, buffet and hotpot at the same place. WHO WOULD'VE THOUGHT), but here are a few choice plates:

 Plate 1: This plate includes noodles, honey chicken, roast duck, pork belly and teppanyaki. Note the lack of appealing colours and the two drops of grease you can see in the top left hand corner. The neatness of the overlapping pork belly does accentuate the stark cut lines of the roast duck, which neatly contrasts the amorphous noodle bundle to the left. Tasted good, except the honey chicken.

 

Plate 2: Some chips, broccoli, crab stick, deep fried chicken, rice, curry, lasagne, and a bit of unidentifiable meat, which was probably beef. The colours here are obviously more bright; the late addition of the broccoli helped counteract the dull purple colour of the unidentifiable meat and the general messiness of the chips and rice. The deep-fried chicken here is trying to hide the fact that behind it is a mess of the crabstick, but oh well. Probably my favourite of the bunch. Tasted most delicious.

 Plate 3: Satay skewers, curry beef with some fried rice, and an oyster (shell). If only I hadn't eaten the oyster before I had taken a picture! It would have looked much better. However, this time, the sauce of the curry is more easily seen, and helps contrast the 'wet' look of the curry to the dry satay skewers. The oyster shell gives a nice Mediterranean touch to the Asian-oriented plate. Tasted okay...the beef was ropey (can you even describe beef like this O_O)

SIDENOTE: To acquire the oysters, my mother had to pretty much fight with an 11-year-old over them. As soon as the oysters came out, in about 2 minutes, my mother and the 11-year-old had split them up between them. Later as I was walking around acquiring my wares, I overheard a lady asking the waiter 'Were there any more oysters?' to which the waiter replied 'I JUST BROUGHT THEM OUT'. His face: priceless.

Plate 4 (aka I Challenged My Sister): Calamari tendrils(?) surrounding a bed of beans. This was a purely aesthetic challenge to my sister, as the calamari was very tough. The beans were also a bit soggy, but the outcome of the dish was probably the best of the night. Father added an egg tart on top, which sort of ruined the effect. Hard to eat, but looked fantastic.

Will post more if I ever go buffet'ing again =D You should try this out too!

'Til next time my dear readers!