The Geometry of a Plated Dish

Every memorable plate is architecture before it is food. The chef at Maison Verre does not garnish; she composes. A dish begins as a measured drawing in her notebook — ratios of height to width, the negative space a sauce will need, the exact degree of tilt a quenelle can survive. Photographing that discipline is a lesson in restraint. The camera wants to include; the plate wants to exclude. In the end we shot almost everything from one position, at one distance, and let the plate do the talking. The most useful tool in the studio that week was not a lens but a ruler — and the willingness to move a single leaf by two millimetres.