Bowls becoming more fashionable for serving meals at restaurants and home

By Tom Harte

They say life is just a bowl of cherries. As the late Erma Bombeck used to point out, however, that may not always be the case. If it were, she'd ask, "What am I doing in the pits?" But even if life is not always a bowl of delight, the food we eat to sustain life increasingly is. Food served in bowls is one of today's major culinary trends.

In fact Ellen Byron, a consumer affairs reporter for the Wall Street Journal, recently went so far as to assert that bowls are the new plates. Sales figures back her up. For example, the Homer Laughlin China Company, makers of Fiestaware, reports that sales of its bowls are up nearly twenty percent and now account for almost one-third of its output. They've even introduced extra-large "bistro" bowls to accommodate the trend. Similarly, Gibson Overseas, Inc., which makes the Pioneer Woman brand of dishes, among others, has revamped its dishware sets to include an extra bowl rather than a mug. Even Waterford, makers of fine china and crystal, is experiencing the trend.

Bowls are replacing plates because people are finding that eating a meal out of a bowl is more satisfying than eating off a plate. As the self-anointed "domestic goddess" Nigella Lawson puts it in a recent cookbook, "If I could, I'd eat everything out of bowl." She is not alone.

Scientific research supports the notion that food layered or stacked into a bowl and eaten directly from it often seems to taste better. Moreover, portions seem larger than when the same amount of food is spread out on a plate. And food piled into a bowl is often more showy and attractive than it would be otherwise.

These days bowls are eclipsing plates as the serving vessels of choice because people are finding that eating a meal, like this burrito bowl, is more satisfying than eating the same thing wrapped in a tortilla and plopped on a plate.Tom Harte

Thus, at restaurants nationwide, bowls have become the vessel of choice not just for soup, oatmeal, or ice cream, as they've always been, but for just about anything from pasta to casseroles to roast chicken to rack of lamb. The last time I had osso bucco in a fashionable restaurant, for instance, it came in a bowl. It used to be that bowls were relegated to so-called health food restaurants that serve rice bowls, grain bowls, or noodle bowls. Not anymore.

Though worldwide a bowl is the principal eating vessel, the dominance of the bowl on dinner tables in this country is in stark contrast to the 20th century tradition of serving foods separately, each on its own plate -- one for bread, one for salad, and another for the main course -- supposedly a measure of refinement as opposed to mixing foods together as poor people did when they ate, say, stew out of a bowl. But now we realize that fine dining does not have to be fussy.

While bowls may be the new plates, there is, of course, nothing new about them. Pottery, after all, is among the oldest of human inventions going back to well before the Neolithic period. Not long ago fragments of a large bowl found in a cave in the south of China were determined to be 20,000 years old.

So we humans have been working on our bowl game for quite some time. Happily, we've gone way beyond filling them with cherries.

Quinoa and Roasted Broccoli Bowls

Though among the oldest of human inventions, going back thousands of years, bowls, not plates, are today's trendiest way to serve food.Tom Harte

This recipe, adapted from kristineskitchenblog.com, might just bowl you over

• 1 pound broccoli florets
• 1/2 cup plus 1 tablespoon olive oil, divided
• 1 cup red quinoa
• 1 cup halved grapes
• 16 ounce can chickpeas, drained and rinsed
• 1 chopped avocado
• 4 ounces crumbled goat cheese
• 1/2 cup sliced almonds
• 2 tablespoons Dijon mustard
• 2 tablespoons honey
• 2 tablespoons lemon juice
• 1/2 teaspoon salt

Toss broccoli with one tablespoon olive oil, place on a baking sheet, sprinkle with salt and pepper to taste, and roast at 425 degrees for 20-25 minutes until tender but still crisp. Meanwhile, bring quinoa and two cups water to a boil, lower heat, and simmer, covered, until water is absorbed, about 15 minutes. Whisk together remaining 1/2 cup olive oil, mustard, honey, lemon juice, and salt. Layer one-fourth of quinoa, broccoli, grapes, and chickpeas into four bowls. Top each with sliced avocado, goat cheese, and almonds. Drizzle with dressing and sprinkle with black pepper to taste.