Sampuru: fake food from Japan
In Japan, it’s perfectly normal for restaurants to put plastic food in their windows. These plates of fake food serve as a kind of menu, showing you exactly what the restaurant serves and how large the portions are.
So we absolutely love looking at all that plastic. That fake miso soup really looks good enough to slurp, it’s so realistic. The Japanese mainly find their fake food practical. You take a quick look in the window, decide what you want to eat, pay and then pull a ticket from a vending machine, which you use to collect your dish. This allows the kitchen to work efficiently. And tourists don’t have to struggle with the language; after all, they can simply look at pictures.
Fried plastic
A real Japanese sampuru (derived from the English word sample) is a true work of art and is not made by machines in large factories, but by hand. The dish must look as realistic as possible and, moreover, be customizable for every restaurant.
Sampuru artists work with liquid plastic, which they pour into molds and then bake. They subsequently shape the baked plastic with handy tools and paint it in exactly the right colors. In this super-intriguing video, you can see how they recreate a fried shrimp and a head of lettuce. The video below is also well worth watching:
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