55 Restaurant Dishes Served So Strangely People Took Photos First

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.