A rather grumpy-looking culinary student folded her arms and glared at me.

I had asked her what she wanted to do when she graduates. I complicated the question by asking her not what she likes to do but what she loves to do.

In response to what she clearly thought was a dumb question, she answered: “I love to go shopping.” Everyone in the class laughed but I thought this was a really useful piece of information.

I told her about a former colleague at Windows on the World restaurant who is a tabletop consultant. She scours manufacturers’ showrooms for the latest designs of china, glassware and distinctive serving plates for several upscale restaurants. My student now does the same thing. She works part-time as a tabletop counselor and the rest of her time as a prop stylist for a food photographer.

She goes shopping everyday.

When a chef wants a tagine or a mandoline or any other piece of specialized equipment, she knows exactly what it is and can lay her hands on it immediately. She finds the cobalt blue plate for serving the smoked salmon and the lavender dish for the chocolate cake.

She found her “bliss” — her perfect food job.

The food & art of an artichoke

I love being a food essayist, and especially like it when I’m asked to read my essays aloud.

This happened recently when WAMC, Northeast Public Radio, invited me to be part of a series of broadcasts entitled Mixed Ingredients, which was made possible through the support of the New York Council for the Humanities.

Below is the essay I offered. If you prefer, you can hear it for yourself and listen to the other contributors’ works too. I begin by saying:

Art and design sell everything we touch.

We are delighted by the curve of a wine glass and the innovative artistry of a wine label.

Lavish sums are spent not only on what food goes on a restaurant plate, but on the plate itself, perhaps a lovely cobalt blue glass plate on which to serve the rosy pink smoked salmon, or the rustic pottery casserole for the beef stew, the perfect lavender-colored plate on which to display the chocolate cake or the pristine white porcelain pot for the mint tea.

Even the display and presentation of the food itself can be considered visual art.

Daring chefs are presenting their food on twigs and wires and other wildly creative forms. Working with sculptors and jewelers, they are inventing new artistic ways to serve — and even eat — their food.

Anyone who has attended a banquet or sailed on an ocean liner will gasp at the creativity of food and ice carvings. And visitors to the TV Food Network are astonished to see the breathtaking constructions of cake designers and chocolatiers.

It was The Four Seasons restaurant in New York that permanently changed the way we now view fine dining restaurants.

When it opened in 1959, the Four Seasons became the inspiration for the modern American restaurant. It was one of the purest examples of an idea transformed into vibrant reality.

The planning for the restaurant consumed two and a half years, and cost four and a half million dollars — a mighty heap of money in the 1950s. At that time the average price of a car was $2,200 dollars. Gasoline was 30¢ a gallon, and the average annual income was considerably less than $6,000.

This was the first restaurant to employ famous architects and graphic designers. Philip Johnson, the architect for New York’s famous Seagram Building, designed the space and graphic designers of the stature of Mies van der Rohe and Eero Saarinen were invited to join the planning team. Their work has endured and can still be admired today.

The Four Seasons was a pioneer in many ways: it was the first restaurant to purchase fine art to grace the space. Dubious New Yorkers scoffed at the idea of hanging Picasso, Miro and Chagall paintings on the walls of a mere restaurant.

Now art and design are essential elements that contribute to the success of grand restaurants, bustling bistros and even comfortable cafés like Panera.

Under the steady rain of goods and services we know as the consumer culture, the graphic designer is the invisible force in nearly every transaction between producer and purchaser. His is the persuasive hand responsible for the design that says to the buyer: “Look at me, remember me, trust me, want me, and buy me — NOW!”

We spend more in a well-designed supermarket, and often choose our food on the basis of the attractiveness of its packaging.

Brilliant design even plays a persuasive role in packaging for fast food restaurants, soda cans, bottled water, many specialty foods and even dog and cat food.

The art director is a trained specialist in color, texture, form and function, who creates the look and feel of magazines, newspapers, cookbooks and menus.

You need only to step into a gallery, craft shop or museum to discover that artists have been working for centuries to turn food into art in the form of decorative Faberge eggs, and distinctive serving dishes.

Jewelers, potters, glass blowers and craftspeople use every media from clay to precious metals and gemstones to render food into images to admire and to use.

Food is art for everything from shopping bags to Christmas tree ornaments and greetings cards. Commercial designers and manufacturers produce a dazzling array of kitchen equipment and elegant, useful tools for cooks.

Still life paintings depict the last supper, a recent hunting expedition, a silver bowl of ripe fruit, a table laden with a simple loaf of crusty bread, cheese and a goblet of wine, or an entire meal consisting of ham, pheasant, figs, cheese and cherries.

Here are feasts to last for gastronomic eternity in the form of fine and everlasting art.

Menu from La Fonda Del Sol, 1960

The exacting dedication to detail that went into every one of legendary Joe Baum’s fantasies was poured into the building of La Fonda Del Sol, a restaurant that involved several junkets throughout Latin America.

At La Fonda, fashion designers draped the waiters in ponchos, serapes, and high-heeled matador boots.

For the dining room, color was used as architecture. The room’s sun-drenched adobe walls set off vibrant purple and orange banquettes.

Recesses in the walls were stocked with hundreds of Latin American dolls, small toys, and figurines made of Ecuadorian, Brazilian, and Argentinean festival breads.

La Fonda Del Sol open kitchen, 1960

For the first time, Joe added an open kitchen, which lent vitality and energy to the room.

Rows of chefs tended spits and grills laden with suckling pigs, legs of lamb, sides of beef, and whole turkeys that turned slowly and aromatically over beds of glowing coals. Cauldrons of soup simmered to the beat of the marimba and mariachi bands and, later in the evening, to the haunting strains of a classical guitar.

Food was center stage, but when the new chef offered the señor a traditional South American dish of stewed tripe with rice, Joe leapt from his chair and shouted at him, “Forget it! No one’s gonna eat this shit.”

The entire staff at La Fonda was from Latin America. They infused the restaurant with a sense of excitement and gaiety, also reflected in the advertising campaign, featuring a mustachioed hombre with eyes closed and head on the table, making  various wise-guy pronouncements such as:

“No. no. stupido, we said, ‘Fiesta at La Fonda del Sol, not Siesta.’”

Or, “We are not responsible for articles lost or exchanged on the premises, nor for deals and bargains struck during meal periods.”

And, “There is to be no dancing on the tables after midnight and if you go home with someone other than the person you came with, it is no fault of the management.”

Genius! Pure Genius!

One way to relive this experience is by visiting the glorious archives of the New York Public Library’s Menu Collection in person or strolling online at Cooked Books, Rebecca Federman’s wonderful blog.