Delightful ‘fake food’

The display outside the restaurant looks delicious. Under the glass lunch sets of rice, meat, and soup stand cheek and jowl besides bowls of omelettes and hand-rolled sushi. On second glance you realize these plates are tilted at an angle, yet the food doesn’t slide off. How can that be? That’s because these are plastic food models, made to entice customers with a visual menu of what a restaurant offers.

The earliest fake food models were made from wax. The hot melted wax was poured into molds and set before being hand-painted. These days they use plastic because it is durable, resistant to fading, and look more convincing after painting. A plastic food model begins with a client sending a sample of the item. It is then placed in a casting box and silicon is poured on it, creating a mold. Once the silicon has hardened, the food is removed and thrown away. Plastic is then poured into the mold and heated in an oven to harden. After, it is taken out of the mold and colored by hand or airbrush, and extra garnishings like plastic “sauce” and chopped vegetables are added. The process is repeated for multiple orders. And anything can be turned into models. Tall beer glasses with a frothy top, ice cream that don’t melt in the summer, delicate hand-molded Japanese sweets, and mouth-watering pizza are but a few of the items these fake food model specialists can make.

Some sample manufacturers have gone beyond functionality to make artistic creations like gravity-defying ramen caught between a pair of chopsticks hovering in mid-air, and larger than life hotdog sandwiches as a restaurant signboard. Some enterprising model makers have made cellphone accessories, keychains, and kitchen magnets with luscious fruits and sushi. If you want to find a few fake food souvenirs to take home with you, Kappabashi in Tokyo is the place to go. Here you can find shops devoted to fake plastic models just like those seen in restaurants.

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Posted September 30th, 2006 by geisha |