Don’t Play with Your Food – Food as Art

Have you ever looked at food on a commercial and wondered why your food never looks as good as on TV?

Well, what you’re missing is a food stylist! Food styling has been something I’ve been interested in for a long time because it combined two things I loved – food and making things beautiful. While a professional food stylist has actual ways to make food look better, like using dyes, skewers, and glue, I’d like to think I’ve picked up on a few amateur food styling tricks through my many years of obsessively taking pictures of every nice meal I’ve gotten or made. Here are a few I would swear by:

1. Create positive and negative space by balancing the amount of food on your plate and the empty space on your plate.
2. Balance your textures and colours, try to get a lot of variety and contrast between each neighbouring element on the plate.
3. Pick a nice plate! I look using neutral coloured plates at home since they don’t clash with the colours of any of your foods.
4. Use garnish sparingly. A sprinkle of parmesan or parsley (obviously, if the plate could use some seasoning) can go a long way to make food look great.

Honestly, a lot of the same concepts that we use in class are equally important in food styling, and it’s interesting to consider what and where that overlap can be.

To end, here’s another video that mentions some cool tricks from a professional in the field!