Food garnishes add color, a sense of balance and cause the taste buds to anticipate the delicacy presented on a plate. While many garnishes are a work of art, the modern foodie doesn’t need to go to a lot of trouble to add pizzazz to a plate prepared at home.

Patrick O’Connell, chef and proprietor at the Inn at Little Washington in Washington, Va., believes the importance and power of garnishes is frequently underestimated.

“Garnishes can make or break a dish.  Too often they are not in harmony with the taste of the other ingredients or with the visual composition of the plate,” O’Connell told Foodie News.

O’Connell knows what he’s talking about. He serves food fit for the most demanding palates from every corner of the globe and many customers return to indulge in his five-star rated culinary delights.

“The importance and power of garnishes is frequently underestimated,” O’Connell said. “Ideally, a garnish should contribute something to both the taste and texture of the dish as well as to its visual delight.”

One of the simplest garnishes to immediately add visual appeal to a dish is a tasty sauce. They come in a wide array of colors and textures and are simple to apply. If you’re not sure you have just the right sauce, try some oil. It gives your plate a rich golden color and it can be mixed with other items to add even more colors.

“In classical cooking there is a rule that anything placed on a plate of food has to be edible.  This concept is still valid,” says O’Connell. Among the edible garnishes used at the Inn at Little Washington are blueberries and strawberries. A small cluster of grapes in the center of a place or on one side also can add a touch of the farm as well as a feeling of grace and well-being to a plate.

Herbs are an important garnish to consider. O’Connell favors using chervil, micro greens or Italian parsley to add a more interesting look than is possible with curly parsley. Also, “In the spring, tiny lavender flowers sprinkled across the rim of a plate can add a striking burst of color,” says O’Connell. “Among my favorite garnishes are the pale yellow, pungent leaves of celery hearts, which can be combined with several other delicate young salad greens to create a fresh, healthy, just-picked look.” 

Thyme, rosemary, sage, mint and lemon grass are other favorite herbs for garnishes. For most herbs, just a sprig or two on the food or beside it is perfect.

But O’Connell warns, “Don’t use one garnish for everything. Certain garnishes become so commonplace that they bring down a dish. The repetitive use of a mint sprig on every dessert for example becomes tiresome very quickly—especially when it has little to do with the other flavors.  I often use a mixture of roughly chopped aromatic herbs from the garden strewn loosely across a plate as though they blew there in the wind to convey a soft, fluid look.”

What advice would Patrick O’Connell give foodies who like to cook? “They need to be continually reminded that cooking, like other art forms, is a vehicle for communication and that every aspect of a presentation is making a statement and contributing something to the narrative.”