With her special touch, food never looked so good by Daniel P. Bader If you’ve ever opened a magazine and salivated over a photo of a burger or a stack of pancakes, you’ve likely seen the work of the invisible hand of a food stylist. No, a slice of cake doesn’t look that good naturally. And it’s not just the cake. The plate, everything that’s on it besides the slice, the color in the background – everything in the composition has been previously thought through. Most photographers, television shows, magazines and advertisers don’t have the cooking skills or eye to compose such delectable images by themselves – so they call a professional food stylist, someone like Washington Heights resident Lisa Homa. 
“Food styling – it’s preparing and setting up food to be photographed,” Homa said, taking a seat at the dining room table in her two-bedroom apartment on W. 181st Street. On the table, is a wonderfully composed – and delicious – plate of tan and brown crackers, bright white goat cheese and deep red homemade fig jam. “That’s thinking about style, camera angle, target market – it’s different than preparing a plate to eat,” she said. “When I moved to New York I realized there was such a field.” Homa made the jam out of leftovers from her latest gig for Alouette cheese. She scoured grocery stores for different varieties of the fall fruit, different textures and colors with which to compose the plate for the photographer. “I always loved to cook,” Homa said. Originally a graphic designer for McGraw-Hill in Connecticut, she moved to New York City for a job almost 20 years ago. “I thought if I really wanted to do this I should go back to culinary school,” she said. “I thought it would be nice to combine the design with the culinary.” To test the waters she enrolled at the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park and took a class on food styling, and then enrolled in night classes to become a chef. She spent time cooking at Royal 1044, a restaurant in the Theater District, and trying to work part time as a food stylist. 
“I finally decided to make the leap,” Homa said. For five years she interned with internationally know food stylist, Delores Custer. She got to know photographers and managing editors, slowly building up her own name in the industry. Unlike the fig and cheese plate, the food she composes isn’t meant to be eaten, it’s meant to be seen. She often layers the inside of an apple pie with instant mashed potatoes to counter how the middle of a pie naturally sags after baking. Crumbles from a slice of cake are carefully reattached with a little Vaseline. Without her help, she said, “these are things that would look glaring on a photograph.” In one photograph from her portfolio, vegetables and greens float on top of a pea-green beverage in glass coffee cups. She doesn’t remember the particular shoot, but if the garnish didn’t float naturally, one trick up her sleeve is to support them with little plastic ice cubes hidden underneath. As she flips through images of her work she stops at an Oreo Cookie on a white background with a perfect bite taken out of it. “This was really hard,” she said. You’ve probably never noticed, but if you bite an Oreo Cookie, the cookie fractures – not too photographic. Homa had to figure out how to make it look just like she envisioned it. She disassembled the cookie, heated the cookie parts in the microwave, reassembled and bit. “We went through a few Oreo Cookies before I figured it out,” Homa said. Besides setting up food for photographs, Homa also does recipe development. Her latest, for Parents Magazine, will be “free form pie,” a crust that doesn’t need a pan. In a twist, she and her son Ellis will be photographed for the piece as they make the pies. “You can use almost any kind of fruit,” she said, “and it’s kind of a fun thing to do with a kid.” The Manhattan Times is the bilingual newspaper of Washington Heights and Inwood.
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