7 Works In Progress From SIAL 2010 Food Design

by Toby

Food design is not just about creating a pretty plate these days. Like any art or design form, it can be an expression of despair as well as hope, of decay as well as growth. So don't be shocked when you read what is influencing today's student food designers as we preview 7 designs from the upcoming SIAL 2010 Food Design Show.

SIAL, the French-based international promoter and exhibitor of what's new in food, holds a food design exhibit every two years. The one coming up in October, 2010, promises to be fascinating if this preview is any indication. The theme will be The Food Landscape and students in two different programs, food design and horticulture, will exhibit their food interpretations, available to taste, of course.

The Ecole Superieure d'Art et de Design de Reims (ESAD), which opened one of the first programs design programs in food in 2000, will showcase food designs of its students, as will the Lycee Professionel Gustave Eiffel show food designs of its horticulture students. Today, the Lycee has allowed a peak at some of it's students' Landscape Food Designs. But, again, don't expect conventional 'pretty' in these designs; they may be inspired by very harsh realities of life. Here is an example...

1. From Brittany With Love, by Nina Bahsoun and Juliette Clement

Food Design: 'From Brittainy With Love', by Nina Bahsoun & Juliette Clement: Sial 2010 Food Design This luscious-looking licorice-laced chocolate fondant is surrounded by custard and edged with crumbled Breton biscuits. But, things are not as they seem, for From Brittany With Love was inspired by the Erika, an oil tanker that spilled 20,000 tons of fuel oil when it sank off the shores of Brittany in 1999 causing the greatest natural disaster ever to hit France.

The chocolate fondant, meant to represent the Erika, has a soft center, which will leak when cut into the custard (the sea) and spill onto the the shore (the biscuits).

2. Bread Pebbles by Yuan-Yuan

Callanques de Marseille

A very positive inspiration, the coastal scene of Calanques is an area of Marseilles on the Mediterranean was remembered fondly by Yuan-Yuan who attended design school in that area. The Bread Pebbles so resemble the coastline, I had to show you....

Food Design: 'Bread Pebbles' by Yuan-Yuan: Sial 2010 Food Design

3. World Chocolates by Jean-Baptiste Colleuille

Food Design: 'World Chocolates' by Jean-Baptiste Colleuille: Sial 2010 Food Design Seeing a fantasy landscape with endangered animals from all over the world, Colleuille creates a scientists curio box with chocolates designed in the shape of those animals and filled with food delights from the animal's own diet. For example, a seaweed 'ganache' is the center of the chocolate whale, banana for the gorilla, and wheat ganache for the grasshopper.

4. Ruins by Pierre Dusaussoy

Food Design: 'Ruins' by Pierre Dusaussoy: Sial 2010 Food Design Sugar cubes form this urban landscape, which like rural landscape, is always changing. Once new, these urban buildings have been ravaged by storms that weaken their structures and hasten their decay. The shades of yellow and rust reflect the ruin.

5. Pods and Vegetables by Nina Camelli

Food Design: Pods and Vegetables by Nina Camelli: Sial 2010 Food Design Wanting to enhance awareness of the various cycles and the parts of vegetables and their relationship to the earth, the leek greens, eggplant skins and pureed flesh, and melon pulp and melon skin are served in dried earthenware pots.

6. Tasting Spatulas by Éléonore Martin

Food Design: 'Tasting Spatulas' by Éléonore Martin: Sial 2010 Food Design The image shows one of what will be a series of lickable Corian tools that will be connected with others on a table spread, representing the urban landscape and its networks of wires, pipes, and transmitters that all connect to link humans together. In a similar way the spatulas, each indented to provide a space for a food preparation, will be connected for an interesting and 'tongue titillating' treat.

7. Steam Garden by Magali Wehrung

Food Design: 'Steam Garden' by Magali Wehrung: Sial 2010 Food Design A monument to the art that is landscaping, Wehrung creates an artistic food landscape for a plate to contemplate, as one would a lovely landscaped scene. The food landscape is made up of raw and cooked vegetables and fruit like a Zen garden.

7. Urban Footprint by Florian Trebouta and Flora Fixy

Food Design: 'Urban Footprint' by Florian Trebouta and Flora Fixy: Sial 2010 Food Design An interactive rendition of the shifting urban landscape, Trebouta and Fixy take it on all the way creating crushable food, in this case mashed potatoes, wrapping it in cling film and imprinting it with icons of the decaying landscape. This green mashed potato (?) has been stamped by a real manhole cover, a front-gate keypad, and a letterbox opening. This is 'street cuisine!'