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Comment by shrx | Hacker News Reader

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...

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> 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?

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