Solution: Cipher Salad

Answer: APPETITE

Written by kt3, with art by lydian

Each object on the table represents a letter in a common puzzlehunt cipher/code clued by the text.

• The bits of food on the plates are Morse code (clued by "morsel", "dash", "dot")
• The straws in the glasses are semaphore (clued by "flagged")
• The flower vases are binary (clued by "sometimes on and sometimes off")
• The tip containers are Braille (clued by "out of touch", "not ... nice to see")

Decoding and reading the letters gives the answer, APPETITE.