Porcelain for hotels and restaurants

Great international chefs know that fine cuisine requires artful presentation and wish to enhance flavor by using a dinnerware service created to their specifications. They come to Bernardaud for porcelain tableware that will showcase their culinary genius and enhance the pleasure of each gourmet meal.

Anticipate, invent and adapt

Bernardaud porcelain graces tables in private homes, restaurants and private dining rooms. Thanks to a comprehensive range of designs, the brand can accommodate every culinary style and dish. A pioneer in this regard, Bernardaud was the first to market collections in step with the latest culinary trends: food-in-the-plate preparation, nouvelle cuisine, California cuisine (which evolved into fusion cooking), molecular gastronomy or, more recently, the reappearance of traditional French home-style dishes presented in individual casserole dishes.

By tracking or, even better, anticipating gastronomic trends and adapting to the inventiveness of chefs from different cultural backgrounds, Bernardaud has demonstrated its own creativity by tweaking its manufacturing techniques and introducing new designs and decorative schemes. Specifically, it sets out to:

- Develop porcelain pastes with high-impact resistance, that are able to withstand a great deal of handling without altering their characteristics or their compatibility with the cooking techniques used.

- Create unusual culinary dinnerware tailored to a particular style of cooking, a new recipe or a new presentation. The thickness of the porcelain will depend on the function of the particular item. For instance, a dinner plate has to be thicker than a bread plate or teacup saucer because it needs to retain heat for longer periods of time.

- Create original decorative schemes that harmonize with the chef ’s preferred ‘‘territory of expression’’ and the interior decoration of the restaurant.

A service tailored to the chef’s specifications

A client chef or restaurateur can choose a model from the house collections, including those intended for the general public. They can also order a new pattern or shape to suit their dining room. Any high-class catering establishment can find what it needs in Bernardaud’s extensive collections. Its broad selection includes white or decorated plates, compartmented serving dishes and small rectangular trays with slightly rounded corners as well as tumblers without handles, stackable shallow bowls or its three-piece set for serving steamed food with its bouillon (a plate surmounted by another plate with holes in it and a bell cover).

The list can go on and on! One chef, a coffee connoisseur, asked Bernardaud to design a coffee cup that curves both inside and out, a design allowing the aromas to develop to their fullest. The foam forms a ‘‘lid’’ that keeps the most volatile aromas from escaping, which helps maximize flavor intensity and make gustatory qualities last. For the coffee aficionado, translucent porcelain is a pleasure to the eye (the design of the cup), to the ear (porcelain’s distinctive resonance) and to the palate (the marvelous taste of the beverage).

Bernardaud also executes special orders for prestigious international hotels and restaurants, private customers, heads of state and corporate entities. Custom work in small production runs allows Bernardaud to demonstrate its technical prowess by creating supremely luxurious objects that feature rare decorative techniques (e.g. gold relief or incrustations).