Face Behind The Food
As the camera drifts gently towards a glace cherry nestling atop a snow white mound of whipped cream and glides smoothly across glistening sorbets in frosted glass, the colours and shapes settle themselves into an image of delicious food that we can almost taste.
These artful creations on a plate represent the high calling of the food stylist, who is the well paid expert behind the scenes of a cookery shoot.
She’s the one that creates a feast for the camera and ensures the celebrity chef always produces good looking food.
We know because we have our very own food stylist, Maureen, and like most of her fellow designers she believes that the very best looking food comes through sheer hard labour in the kitchen and a lightness of touch on set.
The food stylists tell you that making a recipe from scratch is the only way to guarantee the veracity of the look, but they also come with a box of tricks that ensure such things as the ice cream under lights is as cold and creamy as it was when taken out of the fridge 15 minutes before.
Without these artists, there would be no recipe close ups, no loving jib moves across steaming dishes of golden brown meat and emerald green spinach. We would see a lot less mouth-watering food and a lot more huff and puff from the celeb chefs.