Food, as we know, is not just to be eaten, but to be seen as well. Chefs have been focusing on the presentation of food for years now. Plated food doffs a cap to the art of presentation. How often have we been wowed by the sight of a dish over which sauces have been drizzled to make a pattern?

But now there is a shift — and that is towards the way food is served. I noticed that when I had a very interesting meal at Dhaba by Claridges — which is a branch of the popular restaurant of the central Delhi hotel — some months ago. The food came in all kinds of interesting utensils — from little buckets to small canisters.

Then, while having lunch with chef Sharad Dewan at The Park Kolkata recently, the regional director of food production, served me a Bohri Muslim chicken dish called dabba murgh in an old-fashioned multi-layered tiffin carrier. One of the containers carried the chicken topped with pasta and egg, another carried a chopped salad called kachumber, and then there was a roomali roti and a mixed vegetable dish — a full meal in itself.

“This is the trend of the future — of food being served in bold ways, in utensils that speak of another time,” chef Dewan says.

The idea is not just to present a dish in a spectacular manner, but to also underline the way it used to be cooked, or was once presented. The Dhaba, which seeks to remind diners about the delicious and wholesome food served in the dhabas on the highways, is now doing so by presenting food in small replicas of old serving utensils or storage bins associated with dhabas.

The kanistari baigan bharta, for instance, is a roasted eggplant dish that’s served in a small version of the large bins used by dhaba owners to store wheat, sugar, ghee or other ingredients.

“People love these,” says chef Ravi Saxena of Dhaba by Claridges.

The old steel boxes, which one would open at a dhaba for a quick meal to be eaten along with the dhabawallah’s milky and sugary tea, are much in demand. Chef Saxena uses the two-tiered steel tiffin box to serve a chicken preparation and tandoori ajwaini paratha. Chef Dewan’s combo meal of lamb curry, rice, bread and salad is served in a three-tier tiffin box. His roti-sabzi meal comes in one of those old aluminium school-type lunch boxes, with a small dibbi. The roti is wrapped in a brown paper bag.

Dabbas — round food containers — make for good serving dishes, too. Chef Saxena presents the dhaba speciality dabba chicken in a dabba. Another in-house speciality, burni mutton, comes in a burni, which is an old jar, mostly of ceramic, in which pickles were stored.

“Bold presentations are about visual impacts,” chef Dewan stresses. “And although this has always been important and has followed various trends — such as vertical plates, small plates, small food on a big plate, irregular plates and so on — today the focus is on food presented in an old-fashioned manner. It could be a dish sealed in a mud pot, or a modern day dish in an old-time container.”

That’s one reason why chef Saxena serves his balti meat in a small bucket. Balti food, it is believed, got its name from the utensil it was cooked in (though another school says the name came from Baltistan).

The chefs, meanwhile, are pushing the envelope. Chef Dewan tells me that food is being served in innovative ways in some of their premium rooms. “We send a small electric idli steamer with idlis filled in it. Or we send a small toaster to do fresh toasts in the room. This not only gives high quality food to the guest but also creates a ‘wow’ visual effect,” he says. He said it — wow is quite the effect.