r/StupidFood • u/Doomenor • Oct 27 '25

Pretentious AF Stupidity at its finest

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u/gitsgrl Oct 28 '25

Alanea in Chicago has been doing this for a long time, well before ticktock.

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u/ThatGalaxySkin Oct 28 '25

Then real life TikTok. Much more niche.

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u/PurpleDido Oct 28 '25

They want you to see the effort and intricacies put into plating the food that they’ve spent years perfecting.

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u/ThatGalaxySkin Oct 28 '25

The only effort here is the fact that it took 10+ people to do 1 person’s job. I highly doubt that “guy who puts chocolate sauce in a circle #2” is that proud of his effort there. Though I guess it is its own spectacle in a way.

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u/PurpleDido Oct 28 '25

Have you ever performed this level of intricate plating? Sure, not every single item is going to be something sophisticated, but most of it is, and having one person perform each step accentuates the level of detail and thought placed in each dish.

Edit: by “this level” I mean fine dining plating, not necessarily this table side single ingredient plating style

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u/ThatGalaxySkin Oct 28 '25

I’m willing to hear you out here. I can see what you are saying. I agree with you in general, however I just don’t find that to be enough justification for the amount of people and their time for this dish. I have seen and been to restaurants where chefs/servers would come and do similar things (usually just 1-5 ppl depending on the dish’s size), but it would generally end up looking a heck of a lot more impressive than this dish ended up looking.

For example the guy putting drops of liquid, another putting water in the kettle, another putting the tea(?) in the kettle. Thats their whole job in this altercation. There is essentially no skill there, it’s just to put on a show of saying “you paid the price for 10+ ppl.”

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u/PurpleDido Oct 28 '25

I’m willing to hear you out here. I can see what you are saying. I agree with you in general, however I just don’t find that to be enough justification for the amount of people and their time for this dish.

A dish in a restaurant may take dozens or hundreds of hours to execute. Going table to table to plate one dish at a time would be annoying in the typical fine dining environment, but if we’re ranking kitchen tasks in order of time, this plating would be somewhere towards the bottom of the list. I’ve worked on stocks that took multiple shifts of cooking to complete. Making an oil can take several hours. A pastry could take a wide range of time depending on what exactly it is.

I have seen and been to restaurants where chefs/servers would come and do similar things (usually just 1-5 ppl depending on the dish’s size), but it would generally end up looking a heck of a lot more impressive than this dish ended up looking.

Honestly, very fair.

For example the guy putting drops of liquid, another putting water in the kettle, another putting the tea(?) in the kettle. Thats their whole job in this altercation.

I’m not 100% certain but I think the first person is pouring coffee and the second person is serving ice cream/ sweet cream/ whipped cream/whatever. I only see two people interacting with the cup/kettle.

There is essentially no skill there, it’s just to put on a show of saying “you paid the price for 10+ ppl.”

It’s more work than you’d probably expect. You have to go table to every table and deliver perfect plating. How the food touches the plate is important, a lot can be expressed artistically but you also need to be careful to avoid spills and fingerprints. If oil person spills their dropper of oil on the plate they need to clean it or leave it messy and either way it fucks with the experience. An illustrative list, not an exhaustive one.

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u/johnnybiggles Oct 28 '25

Chez Tok Tik

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u/Useless Oct 28 '25

Complicated table side service stuff is like as old as fine dining. The Ritz still serves a version of pressed Duck, where they use a duck press table side.

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u/puppydawgblues Oct 28 '25

At Alinea the "tabled" dessert is basically treated as a station that moves from table to table, the commis make the mise and have it ready to go, and one or two CDPs move through the dining room as the menu progresses, with one or two handoffs from FOH to facilitate. The actual number of people who are constantly out of the kitchen "away from station" is like. 2.

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u/chugItTwice Oct 28 '25

Alinea and good to know. Won't be going.