To easily give an idea of what kind of food a restaurant serves in one look, these high quality plastic food samples are widely employed in Japan. They are so realistic that they’ve even been used for other pursuits such as jewellery and accessory making, and to prank unwitting friends with a great wave of fried rice.

But they can be quite costly, often they are handmade by masters of the craft who utilise all kinds of tricks of the trade to make them look as appetizing as possible.

So what can restaurants do when they want to physically show customers what’s on offer, but don’t have the funds for expensive plastic samples?

This restaurant’s make-do attitude has earned them plenty of fans on Twitter as one of their customers posted a photo of their ‘food sample’ online.

Source: sepuriesu

The meal sets are all laid out with wooden blocks in place of food. The blocks have words like ‘fish’, ‘soup’ and ‘pickles’ written roughly on them to demonstrate what comes with the set.

Source: sepuriesu

As some commenters have pointed out, it does give a general idea of portion sizes, but still keeps the food itself as a surprise, making them want to dine at this place even more!


By - grape Japan editorial staff.