22 Particularly Pretentious Restaurant Meals Served on Anything But a Plate

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Ally Perry • Writer and Editor
Jun 9, 2026 3:45 PM EDT

What's wrong with eating a meal served on something practical?

Food is a wonderful thing for many different reasons, but one of its downsides is that it has a tendency to encourage the most pompous impulses of some chefs. We have all seen those annoying, high-end conceptual restaurants that serve bite-sized meals in ridiculous ways and claim that it's an 'experience', but it isn't just these kinds of venues that have an occasional aversion to the traditional porcelain serving plate. 

It is all very well wanting to be creative, and give a diner a side of novelty along with their hopefully tasty food. It is quite another thing to be slapping that culinary delight on a random object and acting like that makes it more edible. The journey away from plates and bowls to weirder ways of serving not only boggles the mind, but it is often downright impractical, too. There is a reason that we didn't stray away from the classics for so many years, and that is because they are so effective at doing the job that they are supposed to.

There is one upside to the madness of abandoning the humble plate, and that is the fact that it does have some entertainment value (provided you are not the one expected to eat off of that thing). It is highly amusing to bear witness to the various ways of serving food that some overly ambitious cook decided would come across as impressive, but just ended up confusing everybody.

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