Your pic is a good illustration for how hard it really is to get good results in food photography. The light is (even for somebody like me who loves contrasty pictures) a little too harsh and one-directional without any accents. You can just guess the borders of the plate and the perspective, even if it?s fitting the main subject, does not help a lot. IMO there is a problem with the composition also, resulting from all the lines and angles in between like the cop sticks, the plate, the maki rolls themselves...
I never tried food photography myself but shot 4 or 5 commercials for food companies and a cooking series for TV and it always was a horror for me. So I?d say good intention but you definitely need to improve. Maybe it?s better to concentrate on some details before shooting the whole menu!
Hope this was useful for you and you are not mad now...
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