Good ingredients can be hard to come by. They’re usually seasonal, potentially expensive and can be only at their best for a short window.
When you get something genuinely good in your hands, the job is simple: treat it properly.
But more often than not, that’s exactly where it goes wrong.
This isn’t about complicated technique or restaurant tricks, it’s about the small, avoidable things that take something great and make it average.
Here are 7 ways to ruin a good plate of food.
- Doing too much
This is probably the most common way to ruin a dish.
There’s a theory I have that I’ve been guilty of in my earlier career and have certainly seen others fall prey to this phenomenon.
I call it “cooking by numbers”
Take a good ingredient, let’s say Welsh spring lamb. A beautiful ingredient when treated properly and allowed to shine. This is how it is treated by the “cooking by numbers” approach.
Lamb goes well with;
Mint
Garlic
Rosemary
Anchovy
Capers
Olives
Tomato
Aubergine
Cumin
Yoghurt
Honey
Now let’s put as many of these together on a plate as we can.
I’ve seen it happen and it’s an approach many kitchens take to their cooking. For me this is not the way to make good plates of food.
Too many elements, too many ideas on the plate, everything fighting for attention. What starts as a beautiful ingredient ends up buried under things it doesn’t need.
Personally I would suggest you take that same lamb and pick 1 or 2 flavours and really focus on that. It’s all good and well adding more and showing off technique but ultimately, the person eating the food isn’t nearly as interested in your skill set as they are how the dish actually eats.
I also see it a lot with vegetables, for example perfectly good asparagus gets overwhelmed with foams, powders, crisps & heavy sauces and by the time it reaches the guest, it’s lost entirely. Most dishes improve when you take something away, not add to them.
This is especially prevalent in young cooks (I know it was for me) you’re eager to show off and do the most but sometimes the best thing for the dish is to just stop.
This is the real beauty in classical french cookery, taking good ingredients and just adding enough to make them shine.
- Not seasoning properly
Sounds basic, because it is. But it’s amazing how often it’s ignored.
Seasoning isn’t something you sprinkle on at the end. It builds through the cooking process. Miss it at any stage and the whole dish falls flat. No amount of butter, oil, or finishing salt will save it.
It takes time to “get” seasoning, for me seasoning usually just takes the form of salt & acid. There is an argument (one that I may chime in on at some point) about spice being seasoning & what seasoning actually is, but for now let’s just look at salt & acid.
Salt makes food taste more of itself. Now that can be a hard idea to wrap around your head, personally it took me a while to get that as a young cook. Your not adding salt to make food taste salty, salt draws out the natural flavour of foods. Everything generally benefits from salt, preferably fine salt as it attaches better to food and gets in every nook & cranny.
Acid brightens food & cuts through fat (pretty important when you cook with as much butter as I do) it also dulls bitter flavours and again helps food taste more like itself. Acid actually enhances our perception of saltiness & is a crucial element of good cooking.
To quote one of the greatest chefs this country has ever seen, Pierre Khoffman, “the difference between good & bad food is often a pinch of salt’
- Overcomplicating for the sake of it
Not every dish needs a “twist” or a gimmick. There’s a tendency now to try to make every plate feel like it has a story, or an element of surprise. Most of the time, it just distracts from the ingredient that should be the star.
Classic French food, for example, is often genius in its simplicity. A beurre blanc or a velouté doesn’t need reinvention to be remarkable.
Passion fruit coulis spooned onto a plate of roasted pork, caramelised banana served with foie gras or sea bass with white chocolate sauce? These are all combinations of flavours I have seen in kitchens personally. In retrospect they were only put on menus to either shock or be “clever”. For the one person a night who had enough wine before ordering it to save face and tell you how much they “got it”
Food shouldn’t challenge for the sake of it & timeless combinations work for a reason. Again, the cooks job is first and foremost to make delicous that people actually want to eat.
- Ignoring the ingredient
If something is at its peak, it doesn’t need disguising. If you have local, perfectly ripe fruit, or morels in season, or a beautiful piece of fish, you don’t need to bury it under complex techniques or unnecessary accompaniments.
Cooking should enhance an ingredient, not hide it. If you feel the need to mask it, maybe it’s not worth using in the first place.
If you make, for example a puree of carrot, with eyes closed you should be able to identify its carrot. It’s easy (especially in a cuisine like French) to overload everything with butter & cream, but ultimately if you’re buying great produce you want that flavour to be at the forefront.
Every ingredient on a plate must earn its place and be allowed to shine because otherwise, what’s the point of it being there?
- Chasing trends
Food moves fast now. One month it’s fermentation the next it’s deconstructed desserts or exotic powders. But trends rarely last and building a dish around them often shows.
Take a look at molecular gastronomy, this was for a time the most exciting style of food, at the forefront of top level cuisine. Now it’s just not a thing anymore outside of a handful of restaurants that do it really well.
If you want to cook good food that lasts, focus on what works, what tastes great and makes sense. The classics endure for a reason.
- Not thinking about service and timing
A dish might look perfect on paper but if it can’t be executed properly for service, it doesn’t work.
Temperature, plating time, portion sizes and logistics all matter. A cold sauce, a soggy garnish, or a component that melts before reaching the guest will ruin an otherwise fantastic dish.
This is something I think about constantly running a supper club. There’s a fine line between ambition and practicality — push too far, and the guest experiences a compromise, not brilliance.
That plate of perfect food you see on Instagram from your favourite food account (that is, besides @bohemienwales of course) I can guarantee that 90% of the time, that’s a plate that’s stone cold, been re-plated & doesn’t even necessarily taste good. Cooking for paying customers, especially without a big kitchen or brigade of chefs (which, to be clear is the situation in most kitchens) isn’t anything like that.
Food has to be hot, seasoned & served in a timely manor. There’s no point in me putting dishes on a menu that cannot be delivered fitting these very basic parameters.
- Doing it just to “look good”
Instagram has made presentation important and I get it, it’s fun to show off. But cooking solely for the camera is a trap. You can have a perfectly styled photo that misrepresents the food. What matters is taste, texture, temperature, aroma and timing.
Food is about nourishment, flavour & sustenance. I find nothing more soulless and disheartening than getting a perfectly good plate of food that a chef decides would look better covered in a handful of (questionably) edible flowers.
If you are seeking ‘beautiful’ plates of composed dishes, remember first & foremost too serve food that works & tastes delicious. The picture will follow naturally.
Most of this isn’t complicated.
It’s just a case of knowing when to stop, respecting your ingredients and remembering that at the end of the day, food is meant to be eaten and enjoyed.
Get the little things right, that is really the heart of good food.
Tom
Chef & owner, Bohémien
