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It began one humid morning as I was walking through one of my local pop-up foodie markets, meandering among stalls serving everything from Beijing street food to high concept marshmallows.

This past summer, in my current home of New York City – a metropolis known worldwide for its delis and smoked fish shmears, its blintzes and bialys – I was thrown into entirely new roads in Jewish dining, bearing culinary witness to new twists on European and middle eastern delicacies. Why is my Ashkenazi cuisine always presented in balls and slop piles? Imagine, I kept bugging my newly betrothed, being served gefilte fish in tiny egg-like spheres on cubes of horseradish with topiary carrots – the purple kind. Sure, thanks to my squeamish and kosher-style tastes, it was all basically inedible, but the aesthetics! Why can’t they make Jewish food look this way? I kept asking. READ: TOO SOON TO MOURN THE JEWISH DELI’S DEMISE We spent hours in the basements of department stores ogling displays of red bean desserts glistening like jewels, and days extolling the virtues of an impeccable egg sandwich from the Kyoto bus station (oh the yellowness of the yolk!) We also spent more dollars than we then understood at restaurants where course after course was brought to our table as if we were being presented with works of art: foaming volcanoes of champagne sorbets, vinegar apricots perched upon radiant raw slugs, fish flash-fried to look like they were actively swimming on a slate slab decorated to look like a 3D aquarium.

Nearly 10 years ago, I honeymooned in Japan, where my husband and I marvelled less at this grand new stage of our lives, and more at the incredible presentation of the food (not to mention the prices). The layered sea bass plate at Nur, a Manhattan restaurant that serves what it calls modern Middle Eastern food.