Plates and Dishes: The Food and Faces Of the Roadside Diner [Paperback]

Diners, yet again have seduced another photographer, who wanted to capture an authentic slice of Americana. Stephen Schacher went the extra mile and only ate in them too while travelling to take his photos. This should have been a neat looking book, all the ingredients are there but it turns out to look extremely boring.

Each left-hand page has a food photo and every right-hand page has a shot of the waitress who served Schacher. You can see what I mean by clicking on the images under the book cover at the top of this Amazon page. The images shown are in fact better looking than the ones in the book though, all the food images suffer from a yellow cast, frequently the plates break out of the image area (that would have easily been solved by running the photos of the page) various other elements of the meal, drinks or side orders are only vaguely included. For an alternative look at diner grub try 'Roadside Food' (ISBN 0941434680)

The waitresses on each right-hand page are also slightly yellow looking but perhaps more serious is that the pages all look so similar. Far better I would have thought to vary the poses and show much more of each diner, they are after all bursting with visual excitement as Gerd Kittel found out in his Diners: People and Places. The only visual break in Schacher's book are the occasional graphic spreads that display a map and made-up receipts with details of the meals plus where and when they were eaten.

'Plates+Dishes' is a great idea that just isn't cookin', unfortunately.

Oh yes, Bonnie from Fenders Diner, Cornelia, Georgia can serve me a meal anytime, what a dish!

***FOR AN INSIDE LOOK click 'customer images' under the cover.

Schacher's road trip is interesting. The photos show the food on one side and the server on the other. It's interesting to see some of the food (greasy and burned), and how it changes from region to region. A great concept.

The blue plate special, meatloaf, mashed spuds and more are all specialties of the house for most roadside diners, which are celebrated in Plates & Dishes: The Food And Faces Of The Roadside Diner. Artist/photographer/author Stephan Sacher toured the country in search of picturesque roadside diners and their fare: Plates And Dishes isn't a recipe collection, as one might expect, but a visual, artistic food celebration which juxtaposes photos diner dish specialties with their cooks on facing pages. A warm, inviting visual treat, sans recipes.