Recently Jill and I compiled a list of the things that annoy us most about eating out, The No Problem Problem. High on my list is food not served on plates, but slates. Leaving aside the aesthetics of it, the scrape of a fork on slate is akin to nails down a blackboard.
On a slate: a deconstructed lemon meringue pie!
It’s clearly an issue that’s hit a nerve; Ross McGinnes from Hebden Bridge launched WeWantPlates which went viral, with the British broadsheets, Good Housekeeping and Huffington Post chipping in. Check it out; there are raspberries on rocks, sausages in pint pots and afternoon teas on step ladders.
One of the chief miscreants was our own Andrew Pern who, in an uncharacteristic failure of taste took to serving bread in a flat cap. Thankfully he’s seen the folly of his ways and it now comes on a log. I know. The image that will stay with me for rather too long though is that of chips arriving in a trainer (in New York). I ask you?
As Jeremy Hardy quipped: what’s added by serving food on a roof tile? About a tenner.