A dish of pasta in an ashtray? Baguettes displayed in a vase? The old traditions of setting a table are flying out the window as amateur chefs get creative in their homes.
And it seems according to a new French study that anything goes.
Well almost.
Gone is the simple elegance of grandma’s plain white tableware set off by the best crystal. In comes a riot of colour — red, blue or multicoloured plates, or even bamboo and wood, chosen to create a fun, individual design.
Tableware has become ”a way of expressing one’s personality, of letting go, of following fashion, of breaking with tradition,” said Colette Comiti, from the French survey institute, Conseils Strategies Analyses.
And it seems that if children are allowed to give free rein to their imaginations then ”they go very far in their dreams,” she added, explaining the results of a ”kitchen lab” set up in Paris to explore changing tastes in the art of setting tables.
The survey was commissioned by the French Comite des Arts de la Table (committee for the art of table decoration) in a bid to stem a downturn in the industry, only now being hit by changing tastes.
”The tendancy continues to be unfavourable, a stagnation, even a fall in the market,” said Guy Bourgeois, president of the committee, which groups 170 French shops and about 70 tableware producers.
For several decades the industry was cushioned from the trend towards originality and individuality, seen in the fashion industry and elsewhere, by the ubiquitous wedding list, with young couples still asking guests to buy coordinated gifts from a single store of their choice.
”Thanks to the wedding present lists we were living in this little bell-jar. But now we are undergoing the same crisis, but 30 years later,” said Bourgeois.
And as the French reject snacking and TV dinners in favour of a return to family gatherings around the dining table, they are becoming more interested in setting the right mood.
”There are no must-haves, no rules and no protocol. Everyone has the freedom to be themselves, everything is permitted, provided there is a certain coherence,” said Comiti.
She admitted however that certain universal codes emerged from the kitchen lab, in which six children and 12 adults were put through a series of tests on setting tables and tasting food.
Children to whom an empty plate is a drawing board on which to create a whole universe, know ”at grandma’s house they have to respect the rules, and not play with their food”.
And a chic young couple will hide their bright, funky plates and glasses when the boss comes to dinner in favour of more sober and serious tableware.
For Alexandre Cammas, a food writer and co-founder of the Fooding movement, a fusion between food and feeling, this new individuality, fuelled also by increasing travel, means ”the wedding list has no future”.
Radically he argues that tableware makers should stop making series, and instead focus on interesting, individual pieces which can be assembled and re-assembled according to a host’s whim.
Chef William Ledeuil, who owns the fashionable Ze Kitchen Galerie in Paris, said the study revealed what he had long suspected — that taste is ultimately affected by presentation.
He concocted a cauliflower and broccoli soup, spiced with ginger and lemon grass, and served it up to the kitchen lab group in three different ways.
Dished up in a tiny bone-china cup, the willing guinea pigs said it tasted ”exotic” with a hint of zen. But in a thick plain mug, it became heavier and creamier — although nothing had been added — more of a rustic soup.
When it was finally presented in a sickly-green transparent glass bowl, it was deemed to be ”very ordinary” and the children even turned their noses up saying it was ”disgusting”.
”We have demystified cooking. It has become a real hobby, a true pleasure. Being a chef is now an accessible profession, and we are taking that to the limits with the choice of our tableware,” added Ledeuil. – Sapa-AFP