It Is Everything Beyond Taste
What is fine dining?
When you hear fine dining, the first thing that might come to your mind is a finger-sized bite piled in the middle of a huge white plate. There is no doubt that fine dining is not about quantity, but about the engineering, and even more artistic works of food. Colors and textures play just as big of a role in the experience as the flavors themselves. But there is something else that is an equally important part of it: serving.
Today, fine dining may not be as distinct a category as it used to be. Even a smaller bistro can create the necessary conditions, as long as in some factors it takes no compromises.
The Quality Of The Ingredients
Everything starts with the quality of the ingredients. Since fine dining is about food, it is self-evident that the quality of the ingredients make up for the most important factor among all. In addition to the well-known ingredients, which are often used in most households, you will meet more special ones, some of which are particularly difficult to obtain, or can only be obtained through contacts.
Processing Of The Ingredients
Fine dining mashed potatoes will not be the same as what you would get in an average restaurant, but chicken breast fried on an iron plate can also hold pleasant surprises. However, fine dining goes even further and breaks with traditions, often giving new interpretations to the ingredients. You can make dry chips from tomatoes, ice cream from basil, or cakes from onions. Almost anything can happen on your plate as long as there is fantasy and rationality in it.
Wide Range Of Senses
Fine dining is both an engineering and an artistic achievement. All senses should be affected by such an experience. During tasting, the harmony of textures and flavors takes the main role, but the experience also satisfies the eyes with the poetry of colors, shapes, and even the flowers that decorate the food. Our noses are dazzled by the extraordinary scents, while our ears by the hissing of opened bottles, the crunch of some roasted pieces. The kitchen is a studio where artistic creation happens, sculpting and painting, to make sure everything is exactly in place. As guests, it may even be difficult sometimes to dip our spoon or fork into the food at first.
Serving
Fine dining uses the finest serving dishes. Wide plates might be the most common, but you can find creative, organic ceramic shapes, sterilized stones, glass, crystals, almost anything.
And of course, you can also find handmade works. The pairing is perfect. The fine dining food itself is a work of art, and can best be framed with hand-crafted serving utensils.
Can coffee and tea be a fine dining experience?
Every day!
For me, coffee and tea contain all the factors that a fine dining experience has. I carefully select what kind of coffee or tea I use. It matters how I blend the coffee beans, how I compress the blended coffee in the portafilter, just as it is also important how much tea leaves I filter down and how long I leave them in the water. The smell of freshly blended coffee, as well as freshly brewed coffee and tea, fills the kitchen and the living room with an intimate atmosphere.
I always use a handmade cup for serving, which also has a meaning in itself. I can choose from many handmade ceramic pieces for my coffee or tea session.
Each mug of the Universe design is a planet with its ring. Very minimalistic and elegant with an exciting combination of materials: porcelain mugs, cement plates.
I also love to share my brew with an iconic, endangered species from the wild. The mugs of the No Planet B design are unlike anything else. Each mug presents a magnificent scene from nature on beautiful mugs. They are an elegant symbol to always remind me of how important it is to save them for the future.
When I choose a mug of the Diamond design I can feel the strength and stability its regularly irregular edges represent. They are symmetrical from one angle, asymmetrical from another. A unique harmony that certainly frames my brew differently.
This is how the experience becomes complete, special and more personal. And - maybe it's just for me, but I think it's for others too - no matter how many times I repeat it, I can never get enough of it.