One crafty Imgur user has been craving gourmet food – and not letting their lack of funds let them down. The enterprising chef has been putting fast food together in presentations worthy of a top restaurant, and posting them on the image sharing site for all to see.
All in the Presentation
As anyone who goes for chef jobs knows, presentation is everything when it comes to food. You could serve up the finest ingredients in the world, but if they look awful, no one will find them appetising.
Apparently the opposite is true for fast food, as even the worst examples of junk meals can look very appealing indeed when plated up the right way!
The Food Network has a show called Chopped, in which chefs put together amazing-looking meals out of ingredients that don’t sound so appetising at all. One Imgur user was obviously inspired by this concept to see just what they could do with junk food, creating beautiful dishes out of the cheapest and laziest ingredients.
Some of his ‘gourmet’ dishes include a 7-11 corndog sliced up and served with chunky three-bean chili, garnished with ketchup and mustard – and a flower.
Another example sees cold leftover pizza cut up into square slices, drizzled with ranch dressing and a few salad leaves.
The list goes on – his ingredients have included items such as Dairylea Lunchables, macaroni and cheese, chicken nuggets, singles cheese, and hot dogs.
An Enterprising Idea
The creator of the images goes by the pseudonym hideyawifehideyakidstheyreportineveryonearoundhere, a reference to a meme from recent years, and put together the food as part of an ongoing project. He describes it as ‘when you wanna make some gourmet food, but you’re broke’.
The food is almost unrecognisable in his delivery – almost all of it inexpensive and highly calorific, yet presented here to be a gourmet dish.
Part of his technique is to serve the dishes on a large white plate, without decoration – the type that you might expect to eat from in a top restaurant. Tellingly, he leaves large swathes of the plate empty, focusing on one small stack or area of food to ensure that the presentation is breathtaking.
The use of mundane dressings such as ketchup is brought into a new light as they are drizzled or splattered across the plate, creating an artistic design that would not look out of place in any serious kitchen.
His tastes are also unusual – featuring combinations such as savoury cheese flavours alongside chocolate sauce.
Training for Opportunities
If you would like to be a chef yourself, this Imgur user demonstrates that you don’t have to take a course and look out for graduate food jobs in order to be up to scratch. If you want to get started on training, there is no time like the present to start – and it could give your future career a serious boost.
Plating up everyday meals as if they are gourmet is an excellent way to work on your presentation. This is a key part of working in a big name kitchen, or indeed forging your own path as a head chef.
Remember that this is the kind of career that could take you around the world, so long as you have the skills to back your CV up. You could be looking at international food opportunities before long, and that means corresponding salaries as well as a big swell in your reputation.
If there’s one lesson we can learn from this enterprising chef, it’s that there’s never an excuse for not practicing your skills – not even lack of funding!
