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Janice Poon is a film and TV food stylist, specialising in sci-fi and space movies. She was the food stylist for the TV series Hannibal, starring cannibalistic serial killer Hannibal Lecter, for which she later wrote the cookbook, 'Feeding Hannibal: A Connoisseur's Cookbook'. The Toronto-based artist walked us through an average day in the fast-paced and challenging world of food styling for film and TV.
Let’s say I get up because I can’t sleep because all I can think about is how I’m going to make that certain whatever - garnish or presentation. Or how am I going to keep that standing up and not falling over? You’re just fighting all of nature. I get up and see an experiment I’m supposed to be working on in the fridge. Coffee’s not ready, toasts not up and I’m already working. Lots of times I don’t get to breakfast until 2 pm.
The days are not normal. Day A is nothing like day B or day C, and the deadlines shift. On Monday, everything starts at 7 am, by the time Friday rolls around your shoot might not start until 4 pm. It's stressful, you have all these people counting on you to get there with your stuff, on time.
I left yesterdays breakfast in the car because I thought I’d eat my melty toast on my way to pick up supplies. There’s a lot of eating while you’re working or while you're shopping for work because something looked tasty or curious. Work is really playing, I’m really playing the whole time.
There’s really no time for a pre-tasting. When you’re shooting it’s the first time that the actors are in that environment and you want them to feel their part and the energy of that moment. So, the food has to be evocative of where they are and the mood.
You don’t want to make the food too crazy as you don’t know the actor’s taste, but you don't want to make it a punishment either. You want it to be tasty but not over-spiced, with bits that will stick in their teeth or too chewy because that interferes with the ability to get dialogue out. Half the time the actor will spit it, except in this one case where the actor just kept eating the foie gras I was serving. After 20 takes, and I was like 'guys, I’m running out here'.
You get used to cooking on a table in the dark, while they’re rolling onset. It takes five times as long to prep, you can’t make a sound, like removing cellophane as they’ll have to cut and do another take. It’s like camping because I use these little gas burners, I don’t like electricity because it’s slow and they can click when you unplug them, I also don’t like microwaves because they might ‘ding’ in the middle of a scene.
Sketch 'ortolan', courtesy of Janice Poon
Food styling is cooking plus problem-solving. You're trying to keep food looking fresh and alive all the time. For example, food that has to look icy but stand up for hours on set. I’m constantly looking and trying to see every day with fresh eyes, it's fodder for your work. Think of all those things that you know about those foods and bring them to the fore. Spaghetti is spaghetti, but when you want it to do things non-spaghetti-ish, think of all its qualities, viscosity and tensile strength. Gnocchi make great tentacles, and mochi, great octopi. That’s problem-solving, and that’s what food styling is.
It doesn’t do to get the darling baby cauliflower, and the mini doodahs and squash blossoms, from the exquisite grocer for episodic television, when you might shoot a whole season and then have to do pick-ups, and those grapes are no longer in season. Or, you could be shooting at 2 or 3 am and you need six more buns, so you want stuff that you can get from the horrible corner store.
Lots of times you do need something special and you think 'I’m going to take a chance and keep some by in the fridge until the whole shoot is out'. I can tell you how long stuff lasts because I always have stuff in the fridge until it’s dead. That’s why I have the tentacles, I just want to see how long they’re viable.
I had a big scene once where the protagonist had to eat his pet octopus, plus this vegan seafood tower. I turned gnocchi into shrimp and king crab. Lobster tails and oysters were made from things like eggplant, the clams were wonton skin and mushrooms. I took the lobster meat out of the shell and coated it in wax and put the gnocchi tails in along with avocado and spinach for the guts, on and on it goes.
Sketch 'Truite au Bleu', courtesy of Janice Poon
I find it interesting that a lot of people don’t take food seriously. And I think, you know, what else motivates you as much as food? What else tells you as much about a society, about a person, about a situation, about motivation? Yes, so often I think in film, food is just thought of to have something to put on a table so we can have all the characters sitting around a table so we can have a conversation around a table.
On a couple of shows, you think you’re working your bones off getting this great looking food on the plate, then all you ever see of it is on the end of a fork. I realised my food was out of the shot, so I started making my food higher.
My favourite meal is the one I haven’t had yet. It’s all interesting to me. I’m not a polyglot but I cook in many languages, so I’m familiar with all different kinds of produce and different kinds of flours. Dinner depends on what I see at the market. Or, sometimes I get on a roll - about four months ago I was on an Indian food roll. I grew up and learnt to cook in my family's restaurant, and half of what I ate was Chinese food. I’m used to lots of crunchy vegetables and I miss them when I don’t have them.
Sketch 'Kholodets', courtesy of Janice Poon
The other evening I was trying a bunch of take-out from a new Ethiopian when urgent the text came in: “we need another space snack.” So, I thought, 'injera' - it’s all bubbly on one side, in space people love things with holes in them. I think it comes from Trichophobia, a morbid fear of things with holes in them. So, I sacrificed dinner to make a sample, adding in the Ontario morel mushrooms and fake tentacles that I happened to have in my fridge.
When I'm cooking dinner for people it's for a good time, not to challenge them for everyone to tell me what a terrific cook I am. I still use the Silver Palate cookbook, there are like 2-3 favourite recipes in there, it's my first cookbook.
I force myself to go to bed. Lately, it's been much earlier, one in the morning. My goal is to get to bed, especially in my dotage, you need more sleep as you age. I’m already working before I wake because I’m already dreaming about the problems I have to solve. After all, that’s what sleeping and food styling are all about.
