55 Restaurant Serving Fails That Tried Way Too Hard To Be Creative

There is a moment of confusion that occurs in modern dining. You are seated at a trendy gastropub with exposed brick walls and Edison bulbs. You order the house burger with rustic fries. You are hungry and ready to eat. But when the server arrives they do not place a plate in front of you. Instead they deposit a roofing slate, a miniature shopping cart or perhaps a garden shovel. You look at the server. The server looks at you. You are expected to eat your dinner off a piece of hardware store equipment.

This is not a hallucination. It is a global epidemic of plating gone wrong. It has sparked a massive online movement known as We Want Plates. This community chronicles the absolute worst offenders in the restaurant world. They have documented bread served in slippers and sausages hanging from miniature clotheslines.

While these images are objectively funny they also point to a bizarre shift in how we value food. We have moved from dining to performance art where the vessel matters more than the meal. You might wonder why a chef would choose to serve spaghetti on a ping pong paddle. The answer lies in a field of study called gastrophysics. This is the science of eating and how our environment affects our perception of flavor.

Professor Charles Spence at Oxford University has spent years studying this. His research shows that the weight, texture and color of the tableware change how we taste food. Heavy cutlery makes food feel more premium. Rough textures can make food taste saltier. By using heavy slates or wooden boards restaurants are trying to hack your brain.

They want you to perceive the meal as more artisanal and authentic. They are trying to justify the twenty dollar price tag on a burger by serving it on a slab of granite that weighs as much as a small child. There is also the undeniable influence of social media. We live in the age of the Instagram eat.

A white plate is classic but it does not necessarily stop the scroll. A milkshake served in a mason jar covered in donuts and sparklers gets likes. A steak served on a clipboard gets shared. Restaurants are designing dishes specifically to go viral. The absurdity is the point. If you take a picture of your food because it is ridiculous the restaurant gets free advertising. They are trading your dignity for brand awareness.

However there are serious downsides to this trend beyond just looking silly. The most obvious issue is hygiene. A ceramic plate is a miracle of engineering. It is non-porous and can be blasted with high heat in a dishwasher to kill bacteria. Wood boards are a different story. They are porous and can develop cracks where bacteria love to hide. A report from Birmingham City Council actually fined a restaurant for serving food on wooden boards that were unfit for use. When you eat off a cracked wooden paddle you might be getting a side of E. coli with your artisanal sliders.

Then we have the physics of the situation. The rim of a plate is one of the most important inventions in the history of civilization. It keeps the gravy where it belongs. When you serve steak and peppercorn sauce on a flat piece of slate there is no containment system. The sauce follows the laws of gravity and ends up in your lap.

This is what the We Want Plates movement fights for. They are not just being grumpy traditionalists. They are fighting for the functionality of dining. They believe that you should be able to eat your meal without requiring a hazmat suit or a degree in fluid dynamics.

The trend has reached a point of self-parody. We have seen croquettes served inside a plaster bust of a Greek philosopher. We have seen bacon hanging from clips like laundry drying in the wind. This implies the bacon is wet which is a disturbing thought on its own. It feels like chefs are bored. They have mastered the cooking part so now they are just seeing what they can get away with. They are testing the limits of human patience.

Hopefully the pendulum will swing back. There is a quiet dignity in a white ceramic plate. It frames the food without screaming for attention. It holds the sauce. It is clean. It does not require you to eat off a shoe. Until that day comes we must remain vigilant. We must continue to ask the server if the shovel has been sterilized. And we must continue to demand that our food be served on the one thing designed to hold it. A plate.