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Whatever food you might personally love or loathe, you can’t deny that cooking can be an immense pleasure. Though you’ve got to get all the groceries, do the prep work, and finish things off by washing a mountain of dishes, there’s hardly a better feeling than tucking into a dish you made yourself. And if your loved ones enjoy it as well—mission accomplished!

However, let’s be frank: we can’t always tell if our dish worked out. Sometimes, we need a bit of objectivity. One place where you can ask for an open and honest opinion is the ‘Rate My Plate’ Facebook group. Home to 40.1k members, the group invites people to share photos of their food and have it rated by others. You might get a metaphorical gold star for your delish dish… or you might get called an idiot sandwich.

We’ve collected some of the finest and weirdest dishes to show you, dear Pandas, and we’d love your verdict. Would you eat it? Would you avoid it even if you had a ten-foot pole? Scroll down, upvote your fave photos, and share your honest opinions in the comments.

Bored Panda has reached out to the ‘Rate My Plate’ team, and we’ll update the article once we hear back from them.

#1

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Gavin Barrass Armstrong Report

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Ba-Na-Na
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1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

As some one who has struggled with a 4 layered cake….I’m impressed!!

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JoyceFrank
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1 year ago

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Marie Dahme
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1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

That took some serious effort to make a TWELVE LAYER CAKE!!!! I imagine OP might have made two cakes and cut each one with a graded cake cutter into six layer. I’ve seen a tool that has a wire that you can adjust and it passes thru the cake for a perfectly even layer.

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Brazen
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1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I have a cake pan set that is that thin, and I can make six layers at one time. Not sure if that's how they did it or not though. I've seen them do what you've said as well, and either way it just looks yummy. :)

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Elaine Elder
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1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

At first glance ~ seriously ~ I was trying to figure out how someone got that many ribs to stand that perfectly straight ~ 2nd thought ~ how'd they find that many uniformly perfectly ribs ~ 3rd thought (I SWEAR) HOLY C**P THAT'S NOT RIBS THAT'S A SLICE OF CHOCOLATE CAKE!!! DAMN MY STOMACH IS REALLY GROWLING!

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Edda Kamphues
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1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I'm impressed by the baking skill, yet I could not even attempt to eat it...

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Carole
Community Member
1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Ooh that looks cool! But tbh I would probably only eat half of it now and keep the other half for later, even with my sweet tooth.

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Wesley Stewart
Community Member
1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

The Thake. Might be too rich, so serve with ice cream. Other than that, 7/10

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Id row
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1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I'm more impressed they got that slice to stand vertically like that.

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Arabiata Arabiata
Community Member
1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

This is the skyscraper of all cakes. Looks like the Flatiron Building.

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Jackie Lulu
Community Member
1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

That is the famous Smith Island cake of Maryland - well, maybe not that famous - only recognized by one person in this thread. It is delicious, and you can buy one; no need to struggle making it yourself.

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Summer Woodsong
Community Member
1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

As a kid, we didn't have much money and never ate out. My Girl Scout troop was given a tour of Neiman Marcus and we were provided lunch by a donor. I was so excited to order the 10 layer chocolate cake. When it came I was astonished to find it was paper thin, so not much of a monster dessert after all. Don't have much of a sweet tooth, so I wasn't impressed by the extra icing. : )

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Leanna Krys
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1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

great, now I want cake. eh, diet resolutions are for ~after~ new year's, right?

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Marilyn Russell
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1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Anyone notice how most chocolate cakes these days don’t actually taste chocolatey or are very good? Unless you make your own I suppose.

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Cyndielouwhoo
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1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

When I glanced at this in the thumbnail I thought it was a giant cake slice for some promotional thing.

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ShyWahine
Community Member
1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Wow! A dozen layers of chocolately goodness...I bet it tastes as divine as it looks!

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Ray Carrillo
Community Member
1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

The precious's precious preciousness. Chocolate and so many layers.

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Barry Patterson
Community Member
1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

The restaurant is "Claimjumpers" and the eclairs come as a do it yourself kit.

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Philly Bob
Community Member
1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

O.M.G!!!! I'm hypoglycemic and can't fire to high but I think I'd be ready to meet my maker! LOL!

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#2

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Sally Hope Report

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Angie Chiyoko ( She/they)
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1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

This is a really satisfying picture and i love how neat the lines are. This makes me happy. I could honestly look at this all day

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The ‘Rate My Plate’ Facebook group celebrated its second birthday a few months ago. The public group was founded in mid-August 2020, and welcomes members from all over the globe, so long as they promise to follow the rules.

One of the main rules that everyone ought to follow is to set their egos aside. “The group is meant for comments to be made on people’s food so don’t get offended if somebody says something bad about your food,” the team running the show explains. They add that anyone “caught being a snowflake” will end up suspended.

At the same time, members of the group are encouraged to be kind to each other. Criticism should never grow into something more, like bullying or degrading comments.

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Keep it all food-related, and there shouldn’t be any problem. Post something unrelated to gastronomy, on the other hand, and you might find yourself suspended for a couple of days. The rules are pretty simple to follow, to be fair, and all you have to do is be a decent human being and talk about food pics. Sounds easy, right? At the time of writing, the Facebook group was run by a team of three administrators and one moderator.

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Cooking, pretty much like any other skill, relies on a person’s ability to focus and learn from their mistakes. Sure, some people might be ‘naturals’ and quickly move on to making complex dishes while the rest of us are stuck looking at our sad scrambled eggs. However, pretty much everyone has the ability to improve.

How much improvement you’ll see really depends on the time you spend in the kitchen and how willing you are to apply the lessons you learned when you failed, massively. Having someone to bounce your cooking ideas off of is absolutely great. Getting them to taste your culinary concoctions is even better.

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Broadly speaking, cooking is made up of two (arguably, unequal) parts. On the one hand, you have the taste. It’s the essence of cooking and will make or break absolutely any dish.

Even if everything looks delicious, the effort wasn’t worth it if the person eating your food ends up disappointed. Personally, we’ve tasted so many meals that look gorgeous but are bland/oversalted/overwhelmingly garlicky. And it ruins the entire experience.

On the other hand, you have everything related to aesthetics and presentation. And that’s really the docs of the ‘Rate My Plate’ Facebook group. We don’t have the smell and taste to go on, so we’re left to make judgment calls using just one sense: our sight.

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And here, things get tricky. We think that you’ll agree that many of us have seen horrible-looking dishes that actually tasted wonderful. But, on the flip side, we've also tasted tiny, beautiful dishes that work as art, but not as food.

It’s actually very hard to judge a meal by just the visuals because some weird flavor combinations can definitely work while others are bound to fall flat. For instance, Bored Panda previously looked at various weird vintage recipes. And though they sound extremely peculiar to us in the 21st century, some flavor combinations actually work quite nicely.

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For example, Professor Nathalie Cooke, from McGill University, explained to us during an earlier interview that vintage party food recipes from the 1950s are the result of food fashion, but weren’t just a fad.

“That is, the basic flavor combination is something that reaches across the decades. What you’re describing may seem very odd to us in the 21st century, but the taste combinations—savory and sweet (tuna waffles, ham and bananas) or sweet and sour (mayo with lime) are surely very familiar,” she explained to us earlier.

“There were ‘fads’ at mid-century: think of cookbooklets demonstrating how to decorate one’s ham with slices of canned pineapple, topped with the bedazzling red of a maraschino cherry, for example! And you don’t mention the jaw-dropping recipes incorporating marshmallows in main course dishes, recipes that were brain children of corporate marketing departments,” the professor said.

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“But if we were to create one of today’s favorites from scratch, say Pad Thai, we would start from the same basic taste combinations you describe in what at first glance seem like bizarre plate partners,” she told Bored Panda before.

“Cooking bitter tamarind with water, raw sugar and fish sauce will build the basic foundation (sour, salty and sweet). To that one would add the requisite green onions, bean sprouts, and noodles—and likely some additional flavor notes such as shallot, garlic, and perhaps dried turnip (salty and sweet) to deepen the flavor.”

In other words, tasting the dish is paramount. And we’d love to try most of the food in this list, just to see if they taste as good as—or better than—we imagine.

#36

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Matt Gallo Report

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Lexipoo
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1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

damn that’s the longest broccoli i’ve ever seen (if it is even broccoli)

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#40

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Spencer's slave
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1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Zero salmonella because the whites are cooked at a temperature that kills the bacteria. Have you never eaten proper poached eggs? Hard yolks are boiled eggs.

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#47

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Naomi Williams
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1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Ok I would totally eat this cause the smiley fries and pizza remind me of the school lunches I had in 2nd grade

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#49

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Jill Hojnacki
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1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Yuck. I enjoy eating my food, not fighting to get it into my mouth and wearing it when I lose the fight. Sandwiches were invented specifically to be *less* messy to eat in hand, not more.

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#50

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Tan Tan Report

Note: this post originally had 96 images. It’s been shortened to the top 50 images based on user votes.