The process of making fake food [video] | Hacker News Reader

The process of making fake food [video]

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105 pointszdw35 comments

Fake food is a huge thing in japan. A lot of restaurants display their entire menu as an arrangement of fake dishes behind a window near the entrance, so you can see exactly what you can expect when you order something. Some of the food displays can get quite elaborate:

https://foto.sharix.eu.org/uploads/big/58def760470b51dc13515... https://foto.sharix.eu.org/uploads/big/4375dc970871dcba3aebc...

> Fake food is a huge thing in japan.

Indeed.

If you ever have the opportunity to visit Kappabashi Street in Tokyo, in addition to the endless shops selling an impressively vast array of the usual catering equipment, you will also find shops selling ready-made fake food and dishes. So you can, for example, take home a piece of fake sushi as a souvenir of your Japanese adventures.

I spent hours walking Kappabashi. If I didn’t have to lug everything back across the globe I would have bought so much more.

When I go to the Mitsuwa in Edgewater, NJ I love seeing these in the restaurants. Since my childhood I've always appreciated it when restaurants showed you at least a picture of what the dish would look like.

One of my favorite spots for brunch...

Super common in east asia. I've seen some korean stores in the US with this sort of display too.

It might be getting more common to export this particular part of SE Asian culture. I'm seeing it at ramen shops around me as well.

Thats the good thing in Japan, the food you buy actually looks like the food on display. I have never had a hamburger from McDonalds that looked like the hamburger advertised.

I've always considered this odd, though.

The food on display is oddly realistic but not appetizing at all. They could just have displayed a photo of real food, anyway. I don't look at these replicas and think "wow, I feel like eating some of that!". I feel... just weird. It doesn't register as edible to me.

And is any Japanese person in any doubt of what their food will look like once served, anyway?

We used fake food all the time in product photography.

I could tell you stories about motor oil (to simulate syrup), lucite ice, agar or glycerine "dew drops" or the shine of "fat" on grilled meats, shaving cream (to simulate whipped cream), acrylic soups, and so on.

I could also tell the story of when an intern accidentally overdid the CO2 (to "reactivate" a drink), and sprayed a big glass of warm, flat cola onto a $40k Linhof 4x5 camera/lens. Yeah, that intern was me on my first day.

I think I saw an edited version of this video circulated on whatsapp a few years ago with the message / implication "beware of <country> ... they are making fake food to sell in our country". Ashamed to admit I was rather convinced by what the video was depicting at the time. There was a fake egg and "plastic rice" etc.

At least you can admit your mistakes and change your mind about something!

If Process X Channel created this video themselves I don’t think this video is what you saw in WhatsApp years ago. Process X uploaded the video 4 days ago.

I think he's talking about the "chinese are making fake rice/eggs out of plastic" videos that were making the rounds a few years ago. It's definitely not a recent thing.

eg.

https://old.reddit.com/r/InterdimensionalCable/comments/uq6t...

https://old.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/1hrnbf/til_t...

Yes, and not just eggs and rice.

I remember seeing a video that was almost identical to the first few seconds of the video posted in OP above. (Making of a fake cabbage)

Check out this debunking article from 2016. Videos like these, with misleading edits and commentary, have been making the rounds for many years now.

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/assmamaad/the-chinese-c...

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/chinese-synthetic-cabbages...

You are not alone, I just realized I have done the same :(

As always propaganda makes use of true facts/evidence and mixes them with bullshit to give it credibility

When my wife was learning ceramics, her studio displayed student work for sale. I bought [1] a few pieces of fake pastry and a few pieces of fake sushi for her to display on the small trays she made. The trays sold.

[1] https://displayfakefoods.com/

First thing I thought of was food commercials, where the goal isn't to replicate the actual looks of the food on offer, but rather what people would like the food to look like. [1] Nice video though, I'm only used to shops having poor plastic imitations or sun-bleeched photos in their windows, if anything at all.

[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MflT0I7ZPCs

In many markets it is illegal to use fake food in commercials.

But we (I used to work at an agency sometimes doing food commercials) would go to great lengths getting the perfect specimen from the factory, the perfect vegetables, and so on. Multiple professionals would coordinate the cooking and timing of the process. The end result would be the real thing, it might not be edible due to other things at the set (like cheese kept too warm too long), but it would be a true serving of the food.

I do not know if things have changed, but the amazing thing about fake food in Japan for me was always that the real food that you got in the restaurants actually looked like the fake food on display. This is a huge contrast to western fast food chains, where the product and the advertisement often look about as similar as Danny DeVito and Arnold Schwarzenegger.

It’s weird that everyone here is commenting about the fake food (which tbh isn’t news) but not about nicest most charming people I’ve ever seen in YouTube. This video is going into my vault of videos I turn to cheer me up on a dull day.

I think it's just because the skill and charm speak for themselves, whereas the fake food is a more unfamiliar intrigue.

The video doesn't explain what the material actually is. I thought it was hot wax at first, but it seems to sit around too long. Is it reacting with the water? (is that big bowl even water?)

I think the colored wax buckets were sitting in a tray full of warm water. Maybe even with the small warming burners underneath like how catering folks do it.

I'm pretty sure this material is wax, as explained in another video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBVPhcw7OFc

Wax would melt or sag though, and that would be an issue if these are intended for window displays. There's also a bit in the original video where he puts one in the oven to cure some additional material (which looked a bit like PVA).

The stores I came across in Japan very adamant about calling these model food/food models, not fake food. I kind of agree, since "fake" has a bit of a negative touch and those models are works of art.

That's just so cool. I wish there was more discussion of what's actually going on though. Thanks for the new channel to follow!

Wonderful, I always wondered how that stuff is made. Anyone know what the material is? At times it looks like it's just wax that's being solidified by cool water but at other times it looks more like a polymerisation reaction (remembering very vaguely from doing something similar in GCSE chemistry).

Well, what can I say - super talented ,original creative. Thank you very much! Love the video, this process is amazing. To do what gives pleasure - is to be free. His eyes light up, that's the main thing!

There's a great scene in Wender's Tokyo Ga about fake food: https://youtube.com/watch?v=ayCKSFU8-mE

I always thought these were made with molds - but clearly this technique is closer to "cooking". Incredible...

Yes, they use shaving cream instead of whipped cream because it looks better on camera.

Looks better than a lot of real food!

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