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Yuli Wang Dr. Erin McLaughlin Multimedia Writing and Rhetoric April 11, 2016
The “Magic” Effect the Environment of Restaurant Has On Improving the Taste of the Food A U.K. healthcare group named Bupa conducted a survey on 2,000 people in 2015 to list top 50 simple things that make people happy (Ree). Interestingly, among all 50 things, 9 are related to food, including “freshlymade bread” at 8th and “chocolate melting in your mouth” at 19 th. Truly, eating has always been a huge source of pleasure. That’s why there are so many people indulge themselves into food after some breaking-heart moments and believe that it can help erase the unhappiness. It seems like eating has always been attached with such magic that can make eaters jump up and down for the joy. However, homemade food and food in the restaurants differ in the way it delights people. While people recall all the memory of food, for those they eat at restaurants, they remember the good taste, but for those they eat at home, outdoors or any other places, their memory is basically about the experience of eating rather than the food itself. In people’s mind, restaurant is the place where the food really matters and restaurants indeed offer better food. Since childhood, though I firmly believe that my grandpa
cooks the best food in the whole world, dining out has still been a strong temptation to me. Although I hated piano for all my heart, it always worked when my mom promised me a reward of dining out if I practice playing piano for 2 hours a day. Even now, while studying away from home, what I miss the most is the grilled fish in the restaurant across the street from home. Thus I wonder the magnificent power behind the restaurant food – what makes the food in the restaurant so attractive? To understand this question, it is important to remember a saying of Ferran Adria, the head chef at El Bulli, the best restaurant in the world evaluated by Michelin, “Guests come not to eat but to experience.” (Sheila Regan) The great experience makes the same food tastes different. While people dine in restaurants, the overall experience is made up with the environment in which the process of eating occurs. Eating becomes a play. It is no longer merely the action of putting food into mouth and swallowing it but also composed of other sensory experiences, including vision, audition, and odor. These are the four most eminent aspects that restaurants strive to do well on in order to enhance people’s overall pleasure and thus affect their feelings of the gustatory taste of the food. As indicated in the studies finding that detectability and reaction times are better by working with multiple rather than single sensory inputs (Gielen, S.C., Schmidt, R.A. & Van Der Heuvel, P.J., 34) and presence of multimodal neurons that receive converging sensory information (Meredith, Stein, 389-
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391), more than simply changing the mood, the multisensory information are truly integrated at the neural level (P. Dalton, N. Doolittle, H. Nagata & P.A.S. Breslin). Therefore, our brain’s interpretation of the taste of the food does not simply refer to the real taste our gustation sense provides but is also based on the feelings other senses provide. Hence, it really matters if the food looks, smells and sounds to be tasty. In the light of experience of eating, the first advantage restaurants have over the dining rooms at home or places outdoors is the vision of the food they provide. Truly, in the restaurants, the food always seems to be more delicious because of the lighting condition and presentation of cooking. The well-designed lighting color and illuminance level that makes the food looks attractive significantly influence consumers’ hedonic impression and likelihood to consume the food (Aimee Hasenbeck et al. 1) and thus enhance ones’ appetite (Hurling. R, 41) and actual feeling of the taste. More than the lighting, the “performance” of cooking is another aspect of special vision of food restaurants offer that helps to make to food looks to be tasty. As the cooking process presents the raw food in a fresh status, the consumers’ expectations of liking for the food generated by the appearance of the cooked food which is highly related to the expectation of seeing the raw one is then improved, therefore increasingly enhances the perception of the food before it is tasted (Cardello, A. V., 253-297). Clearly aware of the relationship between vision, expectation and taste, Bank’s, a restaurant designed by Wickham &
Associates in London makes itself outstanding among all the restaurants in Britain on enhancing the expectation to improve the guests’ perception of the taste (Samantha Hardingham, 26). Through turning the kitchen into a more open place where eaters can directly see the making process of the raw food into the cooked one, it affects the evaluation of the food by transforming the kitchen into the final theatrical preparations of dishes. Thus, even before tasting, people are already amazed by the appearance and eventually hold a high expectation toward the taste. Due to the correlation between the expectation and gustatory taste, such practice of the design successfully attracts people by improving the taste. Accordingly, as visual cues play a substantial role in the evaluation of the taste by influencing people’s sensory expectations regarding the taste and the flavor of foods (Deliza & Macfie, 103-128), the loss of the magic moments of seeing food and cooking process will eventually cause a detrimental effect on enjoyment of eating, thus prominently degrading the taste (Charles Spence and Betina Piquerasa-Fiszman, 888-891). Dining in the dark provides a perfect example for such case. As Lea Lane describes about her experience of eating blind, “Soup, roasted potatoes and meat. Veal? Chicken? Bread, and butter, which we spread messily. Some pudding for dessert. Vanilla? I can’t remember. It tasted like vanilla but it might have been chocolate. Maybe it wasn’t pudding but it seemed that way. None of the food tasted very good. Bland, bad texture. Indiscernible tastes and texture”, guests’ negative
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attitudes toward either the “Dining in the dark” itself or the food it further verifies the correlation between vision and taste. Despite of the restaurants’ considerate design of the lights indoors, critics complain a lot that some restaurants have taken dark dining too far (Andrew Knowlton). Somehow, number of restaurants make it to an extreme on dim lighting to shave years off faces and adds a dash of romance and even mystery to a setting (Tom Sietsema). As some consumers criticize, zero-level lighting becomes a disservice to them that food and drink can’t be fully absorb. All they remember of the restaurants after leaving the table is a faint picture of what they deliver. However, though there are so many negative voices about the lighting in restaurants, one thing that can’t be neglected is that such dim lighting actually help eaters better perceive the taste of the food. The bright illumination decreases the duration of a restaurant visit by giving an uncomforting feeling (Summers, T.A., & Hebert, P.R, 54, 145-150). Due to the amount ones eat and their assessment of the taste is positive correlated with the time length of dining (Caldwell, C., Hibert, S.A., 19, 895-917), the brighter the light is, the less guests eat and worse opinion hold toward the food. Thus, different from what people believe, dark environment actually lead them to a higher evaluation of the taste and eventually eat more. Moreover, A restaurant would never be counted as a good place to eat if visual enjoyment is the only thing it can provide for consumers during dining. Other than the vision, auditory sense is another thing that restaurants can
study on in order to present a better experience. Background music plays an important role on controlling people’s emotion while eating. As the result of the experiment on the effect of background music on the taste of wine, while “zingy and refreshing” music is played, the wine is more likely to be perceived as “zingy and refreshing” as correspondent to the connotations of the music (Adrian, C. North, 298). Therefore, the auditory stimuli can guide flavor perception by the atmosphere the music presents. Due to this, a restaurant with the right background music can provide consumers with a suitable environment to believe the food they are tastier. The third sense that operates in our body during the perception of the taste of the odor we smell of the food. When I think of a steak, instead of the zingy appearance and the fresh taste, the first thing that comes to my mind is the appealing smell of meat and sauce. This is exactly the aspect on which restaurants do best. No matter in which restaurant, it is always filled with savory odor that makes you can’t stop thinking of eating delicious food. Odorinduced taste enhancement is reflected from the ability of food odors such as strawberry or vanilla to enhance sweetness when added to sugar (Frank and Byram, 445-455). Thus the existence of the corresponding smell can actually helps the perception of the taste. The smell of sweet makes the taste more likely to be sweet while the smell of spice makes the food spicier. Therefore the odor intensifies the gustatory taste. The same thing tastes better when there is an additional smell of good food in the environment.
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With the enhancement on the manifestation of other three senses, the taste that people taste gets to be expressed in a more sufficient way, or sometimes in a fake way if the food is not exactly presented in the way it actually is. Generally speaking, rather than saying that the food in restaurant is really much more delicious than that in other places, what is more likely to lead our high appreciation of the food in restaurant is the success the environment has on helping present the taste. While the actual taste remains unchanged, due to the improvements on other sensory enjoyments, the taste our brain synthesizes becomes better. Therefore, restaurant is a kitchen that makes food designed to be taste with the five senses (Ferran Adria). When people dine out in the restaurant, more than the food, what they receive in the dish is a design of experience.
Work Cited Ree Hines (2015), Get ready to get happy! Survey reveals 50 simple things that make us feel great, web. Sheila Regan (2015), Ferran Adria and the art of eating, web. P. Dalton, N. Doolittle, H. Nagata & P.A.S. Breslin (2000), The merging of the senses: integration of subthreshold taste and smell, web. Aimee Hasenbeck, Sungeun Cho, Jean-Fracois Meullenet, Tonya Tokar, Famous Yang, Elizabeth A Huddleston and Han-Seok Seo (2014), Color and illuminance level of lighting can modulate willingness to eat bell peppers, print. Samantha Hardingham (2002), The Design of Dining Out In London: Sit Facing In, Food + Architecture, 26, print.
Rosenblum, LD. (2010), See What I’m Saying: The Extraordinary Powers of Our Five Senses, 117, print. Karen A Franck (2002), The Space of Food, Food + Architecture, 7, print. Charles Spence and Betina Piquerasa-Fiszman (2012), Dining in the dark, 888-891, print. Adrian. C. North (2012), The effect of the background music on the taste of wine, 298, print. Deliza, R. & MacFie, H.J.H. (1996), The generation of sensory expectation by external cues and its effect on sensory perception and hedonic ratings: A review. Journal of Sensory Studies, 11, 103–128. Lea Lane (2005), Eating blind, web. Hurling. R (2003), Eating with your eyes: Effect of appearance on expectations of liking, 41, 167-174, print. Cardello, A. V (1994), Consumer expectations and their role in food acceptance, H. J. H. Macfie, Measurement of food preferences, 253-297, print. Gielen, S. C., Schmidt, R. A. & Van Der Heuvel, R. J. (1983), On the nature of
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intersensory facilitation of reaction time, Percept Psychophys, 34, print. Andrew Knowlton (2014), Restaurants are too darn dark, The foodist, web. Tom Sietsema (2015), Restaurants are so dark these days it’s impossible to even read the menu, The Washington Post, web. Summers, T.A., Hebert, P.R (2001), Shedding some light on store atmospherics: influence of illumination on consumer behavior. Journal of Business Research, 54, 145-150, print. Caldwell, C., Hibbert, S. A. (2002), The influence of music tempo and musical preference on restaurant patrons’ behavior, Psychological Market, 19, 895917, print. Meredith MA, Stein BE (1983), Interactions among converging sensory inputs in the superior colliculus, Science 221: 389-391, print. Frank RA, Byram J (1988), Taste-smell interactions are tastant and odorant dependent, Chem Senses 13: 445-455.