When I was a child, whenever I went to department stores in Japan with my mum, we invariably would visit the top floor restaurants. While tasty enough, the highlight wasn’t the food – or it was, in a sense. What most engaged my senses was the fake food neatly displayed just outside the entrance of each restaurant. Bowls of ramen, rice dishes, shrimp tempura, all plastic and all looking good enough to eat.

The hyper-realistic models are a distinctly Japanese phenomenon. Tailor-made for individual restaurants, these fakes are modelled after clients’ real dishes. The process involves pouring liquid resin into a mould and baking the form in an oven until it solidifies. After the shape is set, it is removed from the mould, trimmed and further sculpted. The lookalike food is painted and then carefully arranged on a dish to resemble the original.