Iwasaki Images Of America

Hungry? How about a steak dinner with all the trimmings, followed by a strawberry sundae piled high with whipped cream? If vinyls, polyurethanes and resins are to your taste, this is the place for you. Iwasaki Images of America is a practitioner of the arcane art of food replication: making lifelike foodstuffs from synthetic materials. Long used in Japan, fake food is increasingly used in the United States for restaurant displays, film props and even as novelty gifts. When durability is required, a complete salad bar--fake right down to the crushed ice--will look fresh and green into the next century.

Hungry? How about a steak dinner with all the trimmings, followed by a strawberry sundae piled high with whipped cream? If vinyls, polyurethanes and resins are to your taste, this is the place for you. Iwasaki Images of America is a practitioner of the arcane art of food replication: making lifelike foodstuffs from synthetic materials. Long used in Japan, fake food is increasingly used in the United States for restaurant displays, film props and even as novelty gifts. When durability is required, a complete salad bar--fake right down to the crushed ice--will look fresh and green into the next century.

Not even the swankiest Beverly Hills bistro is likely to charge $19.80 for a mixed green salad or $28 for a slice of quiche. But that's what Harry Fujita charges his customers--and what's more, he's proud of the fact that each morsel of his novel cuisine is more rubbery than a frozen fried clam. But that's because his food is just for looking at, not for eating.