Styling also on the plate

Slate – When we talk about styling, our thoughts automatically go to clothing fashion. But aesthetics and design don’t only have meaning in clothing. They have also made a name for themselves in the food industry. To find out more about this profession, we met Ndagou Ndiaye. She is a photographer and food stylist.

Has a photo ever influenced you in buying a dish, a sandwich or any other food product? Did what you were served match the picture? Or were you rather disappointed? Have you ever felt scammed by a food photograph that did not correspond to reality?

First, we wanted to know why the hamburger we buy does not always look like the one displayed at the entrance to fast food outlets and what motivates us to walk through the door to order it.

“It’s prepared especially to make you want to buy it, but you’ll never eat it because it’s inedible,” explains food stylist Ndagou Ndiaye, who offers to show us the difference between the two.

After cutting the bread, she carefully overlaps the lettuce leaves, letting them overflow before securing them with pins. She then coats the raw steak with soy sauce to give it a brown color before using a torch to flame it.

“We brown it just on the surface, it stays raw”, she explains before delicately lifting the steak to place it on the salad.

She then lays out a disc of bread then places a second steak then the cheese on the edges. She slightly melts the latter using the blowtorch and finally adds the tomatoes before closing the burger.

Before each layer, she checks that the elements are parallel and pads the sagging sides with paper so that the burger stands up straight. A perfectly prepared burger in which all the elements can be distinguished.

And to the question, isn’t this a scam or false advertising? Ndagou Ndiaye answers in the negative. “I don’t think so because the elements used for the preparation are the same, it’s just the presentation that is done differently. »

“Food styling consists of embellishing a product, making it attractive, prettier, so that it can pass cream in the image”, she explains to us.

Ndagou Ndiaye is a graduate in the chemical and agro-food industry and is currently pursuing studies in nutrition. She is also a food blogger, founder of “Little Things”, a company selling cupcakes. Her passion for cooking pushed her to learn and practice culinary styling.