Toast?

1/4/13

I wonder if this is real toast.  I've read about how advertising company photographers have all kinds of tricks to make non-food items look delicious on camera, and workarounds that make real food look better.  For example, they generally use motor oil in place of syrup in pancake commercials, because it looks more like syrup than actual syrup looks.  Is this because syrup just isn't pretty, or because we've all grown up seeing motor oil instead?  Who can say?

In any event, there is way too much butter on that top slice and a suspicious lack of any on the others.  If this is real toast, you could maybe assume that each slice has its own pat of butter and that the others have melted due to the heat of the slice on top of each pat, but who can say for sure?  Maybe it's from a really disappointing diner where the food all looks great but is pretty lackluster once tasted.

If I had a diner like that whose main focus was on the visual appeal of my food, I'd have put this toast on a different plate.  There is no contrast here on this crust-colored plate with this toast-colored toast on top of it.  That pat of butter is the most interesting part and we've already discussed why that's a problem.  Why not a red plate or a green one, or, better yet, some kind of turquoise or aqua plate that would contrast with the food instead of matching it so closely?

In fact, is that plate made of unglazed terra cotta?  It could be, and that's just not right. Imagine how permeable that stuff is; a dishwasher can only do so much.  It would always be full of grease-and-flavor remnants of previous meals eaten by possibly unwashed strangers; the kind of people who would go to a cafe just to look at the food and not to eat it.  Vampires?  I think it would be vampires. I guess I'm never going to eat in this Imaginary but Visually Appealling Diner of Disappointment and Possible Exsanguination..  Now, to find their yelp page and complain.