Effects of Adding an Italian Theme to a Restaurant on the Perceived Ethnicity, Acceptability, and Selection of Foods

121

Background: Researchers have demonstrated that a variety of visual factors, such as the colour and balance of the elements on a plate, can influence a diner's perception of, and response to, food. Here, we report on a study designed to assess whether placing the culinary elements of a dish in an art-inspired manner would modify the diner's expectations and hence their experience of food. The dish, a salad, was arranged in one of three different presentations: One simply plated (with all of the elements of the salad tossed together), another with the elements arranged to look like one of Kandinsky's paintings, and a third arrangement in which the elements were organized in a neat (but non-artistic) manner. The participants answered two questionnaires, one presented prior to and the other after eating the dish, to evaluate their expectations and actual sensory experience. Results: Prior to consumption, the art-inspired presentation resulted in the food being considered as more artistic, more complex, and more liked than either of the other presentations. The participants were also willing to pay more for the Kandinsky-inspired plating. Interestingly, after consumption, the results revealed higher tastiness ratings for the art-inspired presentation.

Section: Limitations Of Present Research and Directions For Future Rementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A taste of Kandinsky: assessing the influence of the artistic visual presentation of food on the dining experience

Michel

Velasco

Gatti

et al. 2014

121

“…In addition to the name of the menu item being important, Wansink, van Ittersum, and Painter [68] have reported that the text used to describe a food item on a menu can affect its appeal. They found that menu items with more elaborate descriptions were rated more favourably (more positive comments about the food, more appealing, tastier, and perceived to have a higher caloric content) than their identical (but simply-named) counterparts.…”

Section: Menu: Pricing and Namingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Assessing the impact of the tableware and other contextual variables on multisensory flavour perception

Spence

Harrar

Piqueras‐Fiszman

2012

Currently little is known about how the non-edible items associated with eating and drinking (tableware items such as the plates, bowls, cutlery, glasses, bottles, condiment containers, etc.), or even environmental factors (such as the lighting and/or background music), affect people's perception of foodstuffs. Here, we review the latest evidence demonstrating the importance of these contextual variables on the consumer's behavioural and hedonic response to, and sensory perception of, a variety of food and drink items. These effects are explained by a combination of psychological factors (high level attributes, such as perceived quality, that may be mediating the effects under consideration), perceptual factors (such as the Ebbinghaus-Titchener size-contrast illusion and colour contrast in the case of the colour of the plateware affecting taste/flavour perception), and physiological-chemical factors (such as differences in the release of volatile organic compounds from differently-shaped wine glasses). Together, these factors help to explain the growing body of evidence demonstrating that both the tableware and the environment can have a profound effect on our perception of food and drink.Keywords: Cutlery, Tableware, Contextual factors, Flavour, Liking, Multisensory, Weight, Colour, Size, Material ReviewResearch on the topic of flavour perception has grown rapidly over the last decade or so (see Figure 1). In particular, the relative contributions of the various sensory cues (i.e., olfactory, gustatory, somatosensory, auditory, visual, and trigeminal) to multisensory flavour perception have been examined for a wide variety of different food and beverage items (see [1,2] for reviews). While a number of recent studies have also highlighted the importance of atmospheric/environmental cues in determining what, how much, and how quickly, we eat and drink, and even how much we report liking the experience ([3,4]; for reviews, see [5,6]), far less research has studied the role of the tableware on eating, drinking, and flavour perception. Below, we review the latest evidence highlighting the significant effect that the non-edible components of eating and drinking (e.g., the cutlery, plateware, glassware, condiment containers, menus, and atmosphere) can have on people's perception of, and response to, foods and beverages. CutleryCutlery, by which we mean forks, knives, and spoons, has been in widespread use for nearly 200 years now (e.g., [7,8]). Traditionally, it was made from a wide variety of different materials, such as wood, bone, ceramic, iron, brass pewter, etc. Nowadays, though, the range of materials used for cutlery is much narrower, mainly limited to stainless steel, silver, plastic, or wood (for chopsticks and the cutlery often found in ecofriendly coffee shops). This streamlining of materials has probably resulted from a combination of factors including: the ease and cost of manufacture/production, the ease of cleaning, environmental impact, and any taste transferred from the cutlery to the food.Lau...

“…Many authors have already demonstrated the effects of the physical testing environment on food acceptability and choice [26][27][28][29]. In addition, a great deal of research has been carried out recently on the context effect [30][31][32].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Assessing the influence of the color of the plate on the perception of a complex food in a restaurant setting

Piqueras‐Fiszman

Giboreau

Spence

2013

Background: Nowadays, more and more importance is given to how restaurant dishes are visually presented. With regard to the color of the plate, several recent studies have demonstrated that identical foods served on plates (or in containers) of different colors are often perceived differently at both the sensorial and hedonic levels. However, to date, these effects have not been tested in an ecologically valid setting with a range of more complex foods in order to assess the generalizability of the findings. The aims of the present study were to test the extent to which the color of the plate may influence the gustatory and hedonic experiences of a complex food. Specifically, we investigated diners' perception of three desserts served on a white or black plate in a between-participants experimental design in a real restaurant setting. Results: The results demonstrated that the color of the plate exerted a significant influence on people's perception of the food, but that this effect varied as a function of the type of dessert served. The effects cannot be explained only in terms of color contrast. Color-flavor associations, for example, black with intense chocolate flavor, or even sophisticated chocolate, could have an impact too. Interestingly, the perceptual pattern for each dessert was constant for each plate used; that is, for all of the attributes rated, the higher scores were obtained with the same plate, for all of the desserts. Conclusions: These results confirm the importance of the color of the plate (or background color) on people's expectation and perception of food, even in realistic and less controlled conditions, such as that of a restaurant.