Level of gold applied to dish (7)
I believe the answer is:
plateau
'level' is the definition.
(thesaurus)
'gold applied to dish' is the wordplay.
'gold' becomes 'Au' (Au is the chemical symbol for gold).
'applied to' means one lot of letters go next to another.
'dish' becomes 'plate' (plate is a kind of dish).
'au' after 'plate' is 'PLATEAU'.
'of' acts as a link.
(Other definitions for plateau that I've seen before include "Level outcrop of land" , "Reach a level" , "level part of range" , "Flat raised land" , "High flat land" .)