According to a recent YouGov study, the answer is very much a yes, with 69% of Brits believing it to be acceptable for restaurants, cafés and pubs to serve meals on slates.
A further 64% of diners also gave the thumbs up to food served on wooden boards.
The survey was conducted by showing 2,030 British people a series of increasingly unconventional eating vessels (drawn from the We Want Plates Twitter archive) and asking them whether they thought it was acceptable to serve food on them.
Unsurprisingly, the standard circular plate was the least controversial vessel, with pretty much everyone (99%) believing it to be an acceptable way to serve food.
Plant pot surprise
This was followed by square plates (96%) and slates and wooden boards (69% and 64%).
Somewhat surprising was the news that just over half (52%) of British people believed it was OK for restaurants, cafés and pubs to serve food in a plant pot, compared to 45% who considered it unacceptable.
No to footwear
The least acceptable means of presenting food was footwear, with less than one in 10 people (9%) saying they thought it was OK to serve food in a shoe (even if it was clean). This was followed by a dog bowl, with one in 10 people saying eating from the same type of dish as man’s best friend was acceptable.
Three other vessels also failed to gain the support of a majority of British people: shovels (17%), jars (18%) and flooring panels (28%).
Earlier this month, The Morning Advertiser looked at 11 ways in which pub food should definitely not be served.