They say you start eating with your eyes. Which is weird - cos you eat with your mouth, everyone knows that. Not even babies try and eat with their eyes - and they're stupid.
But there's certainly no better way to get the juices flowing than with a plate of food that looks darn-right delicious.
So if you want to find a plate of food that's as pleasing to the peepers as it is your palate then take a look at these esteemed establishments...
Michelin-starred Lima serves food that looks as good as it tastes. The octopus is not a creature renowned for its beauty, but here after being lightly braised with olives and white quinoait’s prettified with leaves and flowers. Served as a starter, you’ll wish there was more of it.
At Yauatcha they’ve cleverly positioned their mouth-watering confectionery in a glass-fronted counter so it’s one of the first things you notice when you enter. The brightly coloured macarons and petits gateaux are enough of a reason to visit, before you tuck into their acclaimed dim sum.
Texture shows how a pigeon claw can be beautiful rather than savage. Chunks of ruby-red meat are paired with chargrilled sweet corn and bacon-flavoured popcorn.
One of Heston Blumenthal’s most famous dishes is the meat fruit. It looks like a perfect mandarin, but slice it apart and you’ll find silky chicken liver parfait. The whole process – alcohol reduction, terrine, mandarin jelly and creating a perfect stem – takes five days.
Café Royal’s Oscar Wilde Bar has one of London’s most ostentatious afternoon teas. One of the desserts is the Passion Banana Opera, a cake sumptuously layered with banana sponge and passion fruit cream, topped with dazzling fruit tuilles.
Nothing is what you’d expect at Pollen Street Social. The quail served “brunch” style with cereal bowl, tea and sandwich is in fact quail terrine on a brioche, a cereal bowl of wheat, barley and mushroom risotto and a cup of quail stock and lapsangsouchong “tea”. Oh, and there’s a wooden box with a drawer that reveals confit quail leg and breast.
Beauty is indeed in the eye of the beholder, but whatever your ideal is Tramshed’sIndian rock chicken with stuffing and chips is a show-stopper. A whole chicken arrives on the table upright on a skewer to be carved by the diners, covered in crispy skin and dripping with gravy for you to mop up your fries with.
There is no fixed menu at Hedone, but for a while they served squab pigeon, the leg of which was left whole with a claw. Chef-proprietor Mikael Jonsson manages to beautify it by adding roasted red and golden beetroots along with colourful dabs of jus.
Presentation is everything in Japanese cuisine. At Yashin Ocean House the Vegetable Garden Tempura is served on a garden naturally, with the tempura in a plant pot and dipping sauce in a metal watering bucket.