Salt & Ember.
The brief.
Salt & Ember cooks over open fire in a room lit mostly by candles, and their old menu photography looked like a different restaurant — bright, white, anonymous. They asked us to shoot the food the way the room feels at 9pm: dark wood, low light, ember tones. Thirty-two dishes, shot between lunch and dinner service, in the dining room itself.
The approach.
We built one table by the pass and never moved it. A single diffused strobe stood in for the candlelight at a level the kitchen could actually plate against, and every dish was shot within ninety seconds of leaving the pass — the kitchen ran a dedicated plating cook for our table, which is the only reason the glazes still glistened.
Four services, eight dishes each, and the dining room reset between every one. The staff ate the selects. This is the correct way to run a food shoot and we will not be taking questions.
- Client
- Salt & Ember, Brooklyn
- Service
- Campaign · menu
- Shoot
- 4 services · in the dining room
- Kit
- PhaseOne XF · 50mm + 100mm macro
- Frames
- 32 dishes · 90 seconds off the pass
- Delivery
- Menu, site, press kit, social cuts
The room finally matches the pictures.
The new menu photography runs across the restaurant's site, reservations and a Plate Magazine feature. Weekend covers are up a third year on year — the food was always this good; now the pictures admit it.
