Don't eat the food!

Fred Ferretti reports.

Let them sew cake!

Princely piggy goes to market

Splatter free

Branching out

Pint and shoot

Honey, I shrunk the chef

Tokyo—Scenes from a window: bowls of glistening noodles in translucent broth, some of their strands twisted around the ends of a pair of bamboo chopsticks surreally suspended above; layered shortcakes lashed with whipped cream and scatterings of strawberries; ice cream sodas; seaweed wrapped sushi; mounds of fried rice and tempura; heads of leafy savoy cabbage and garlands of red onions.

Gourmet shop? Restaurant?

Neither.

Truth is, all of these come-hither delectables are fakes, nothing more than replicas of food fashioned from plastic, resin, wax glue, and precise applications of paint. Although displays of plastic food abound throughout Japan and other parts of Asia, as well as in many Asian restaurants in the United States, they're most prominent in a two block area of northeast Tokyo known as Kappabashi that's marked by two odd buildings—one, a five story edifice crowned by a 30-foot brightly painted face of a Western style chef complete with moustache and toque, and the other, across the street, supporting terraces shaped like giant coffee cups. Only in Kappabashi, with its tidy turmoil of cooking equipment supply houses, are both Asian and Western foods so widely reproduced: wontons and croissants, tempura and Big Mac french fries, soba and slices of roast beef, soybean pastries and watermelons. Since the 1920s, the Japanese have used these still-life sculptures to disseminate images of the unfamiliar Western foods encroaching on the national diet. Hence, a restaurant window surfeit of BLTs, omelets, fried eggs (sunny-side up, with bacon), fried shrimp, breaded veal cutlets, stews, chops, salads, and pastas all fashioned from a variety of materials except food. And virtually all of these miniature sculptures—teaching aids, really—come from Kappabashi.

In Maizura, the neighborhood's most famous emporium, which opened in 1927, the shopkeepers patiently explain to the curious that the fake lettuce and cabbage, for example, are constructed by floating thin sheets of soft plastic in warm water, then pulling them carefully until they wrinkle and resemble real leaves. These are then glued onto heads and painted. Noodles and pastas are, in fact, plastic strands, piled into permanent mounds while still warm. Tempura coating is similarly faked to wrap around plastic shrimp or asparagus. Drinks—beer, colas, cocktails, and juices—are fabricated from spongy glycerine and silicone ice cubes. The final masterstrokes are in the painting: whole fish—sea bass, red snapper, grouper, salmon, tuna, and breammeticulously detailed, right down to the gills, and a plate of pale spaghetti lolling in a tomato red sauce, the strands of pasta rising more than six inches to a fork fixed in the air.

It's the same at other shops: at Tokyo Biken, displays of éclairs, huge halved melons, bunches of bananas, and Alaskan king crab legs; at Hamadaya, a menu of still-life grapes, pears, bowls of noodles with pork, and corn on the cob; at Minegishi, strings of braided garlic, plates of penne arrabiata, and lettuce and tomato salads.

As you leave Kappabashi, a small discrete sign on a wall next to the building with the giant coffee cup balconies reads, "The only wholesale district in Japan specializing in kitchenware. All kinds of kitchen articles are available here." Along with food—food as utilitarian art.