While reading (yet another) discussion this week about whether food photos are “real,” I decided it would be way more entertaining to scroll through old Facebook albums.
That’s when I found this dish from 2009.
If you think you know what you’re looking at, you’re probably wrong. Keep scrolling.
Looking at this particular photo brought back a memory I hadn’t thought about in years…
At the time, I was running my first kitchen as an Executive Sous Chef, effectively acting as Chef de Cuisine under my mentor, the chef who became the Food & Beverage Director.
Looking back now, I also laugh a little.
My mentor and I prepared this dish for a food photography session, and everything had to be perfect.
Of course there were microgreens. (It was 2009.)
While we were executing, he turns to me and asks me why I don’t have a nice Japanese knife like all the other cooks. (it would be easier to sashimi the Albacore.)
Back then, Japanese knives were becoming the thing every cook bought. I remember commenting that I was taught those knives were something you had to earn. Those assholes buy these knifes but can’t even keep them sharp. What a waste of money.
Without hesitation, my mentor turned to me, hands me a Japanese knife, and said:
“Out of everyone in this kitchen, you’re the one who deserves that knife.”
I don’t remember what knife he handed me, or what brand it was.
I don’t care—I remember how that moment felt.
Yeah—the dish was styled. The photos were styled. The restaurant itself was styled. That’s part of hospitality. People don’t just pay for food. They pay for an experience.
A rule I stubbornly defended: the photo still had to resemble the dish. The guest had to recognize what landed on their table. The goal was never to invent something that wasn’t there — it was to present what was there, at its best.
Funny enough, that’s what made me think about this dish again.
The featured image for this post isn’t the original photo. I quickly snapped the photo on my BlackBerry Bold before the plate left the kitchen.
That BlackBerry gleefully flattened everything — the fish, the colour, the oil, the texture, all turned into the same orange-grey mush. The dish looked better than the camera could handle.
Modern tools let me restore some of that. Not because the tool is magic — anyone can open the same app. But seventeen years of knowing what that dish was supposed to look like is what told me how far to push it, and where to stop.
It wasn’t the garnish, or the photography, or even the food that stuck with me. It was the kitchen. The mentor. The curiosity that came with both.
Same knife. In skilled hands.
Funny how a seventeen-year-old photo can remind you of the things that actually mattered.
