Comedy Twitter account mocks food served on anything but plates

12 March 2015 by Hannah Thompson

A joke Twitter account has been set up poking fun at food that is served on anything but plates.

The Tweets by WeWantPlates account was started by West Yorkshire resident Ross McGinnes just over a week ago, and already has almost 10,000 followers (9.903 at the time of writing).

McGinnes captioned the account with the bio: "Crusading against serving food on bits of wood and roof tiles. Chips in little buckets, flowerpots and jam-jar drinks can do one too."

Twitter users have tweeted the account with instances of food presented in a wide variety of ways, but crucially, not plates.

Examples of plate substitutes include slates, a broken bathroom tile, small squares of decking wood, jam jars, a miniature picnic bench, a wooden box, a chopping board, a stone, a shoe, and even a "sharing" portion of pasta placed directly into the middle of a four-person table.

Well-known food writers have also entered the fray: Jay Rayner and Times columnist Katie Glass discussed images including scrambled eggs served on a wooden board, and baked beans spooned on to an apparently gravity-defying stretch of greaseproof paper (from @elyeah_), while Guardian food critic Marina O'Loughlin submitted a photo of food presented in a flat cap.

McGinnes has now taken to retweeting the many examples sent to him, often with a witty comment or despairing response.

A photo of a "A fry up on a shovel" from Twitter user @RobFreeman was captioned with "Oh for the love of God, Rob", while a mini supermarket trolley of chips from @WhelanLWH was sarcastically commended as "textbook".

Photos from users are still piling in, with the most recent selection including a dessert served on the top of an old soup can, a salad on a table tennis bat, sandwiches served on a mini "bookcase", and peas presented in a small tin bucket. There were even "chips on a washing line", from @EmerTheScreamer in Dublin.

The account's roaring success over the past 24 hours has also seen a new Facebook page set up alongside, with yet more photos of the "offending" dishes. In just 24 hours the page has had nearly 1,000 likes.

Speaking to The Caterer, McGinnes said: "I set the Twitter account up last week after a friend posted a picture of an average-sized steak on Facebook, which had been served to him on a large chopping board. It was captioned, un-ironically, "That is a big meal!" It wasn't a big meal - he'd fallen for all this style-over-content nonsense. I searched Twitter for an account which would let me to vent my spleen with like-minded people, but couldn't find anything.

"The reaction has been phenomenal… I was worried the material would dry up after a few days, but it's the opposite. Pictures are pouring in. I'm now having to be selective with what I tweet for fear of flooding people's timelines."