Plating is where the sauce goes

Four decisions make a plate look professional, and none of them is decoration: height, empty space, where the sauce sits, and how hot the plate is.

1. Sauce goes under or beside, almost never over. Poured over, it hides the thing you cooked and goes dull within a minute; spooned beside, it stays glossy and the food keeps its edges.
2. Leave the outer third of the plate empty. The rim is the frame; food in the frame reads as a full plate rather than a composed one.
3. Build one high point, not three. The eye needs somewhere to land, and three equal mounds give it nowhere.
4. Warm the plate to about 60 °C. A cold plate takes the heat out of the food in under a minute and the sauce sets on it — the single biggest gap between a home plate and a restaurant one.