New Japanese Food Sample Making Cafe opens in Asakusa, Tokyo

A unique tourist experience where you can eat Japanese food…and take it home with you to enjoy forever as a hyper-realistic food sample.

Travelling is all about making memories through unique experiences, and if you can take a little keepsake of the moment home with you, all the better. That’s the concept behind a new cafe in Tokyo’s historic Asakusa district, where you’ll be able to enjoy a Japanese meal and take it home with you in plastic form to enjoy forever.

Called the Food Sample Making Cafe, this new eatery-experience is said to be a Japan-first, where diners can try their hand at making their own plastic food samples, an art that Japan has become world-famous for. Plastic food samples are generally displayed in the front windows of restaurants, often with numbers for ease of ordering when you enter, and they’re so well made that you often have to do a double-take to check they’re not actually real.

The culture of food samples have become so popular with overseas tourists that some stores offer classes where participants can make their own varieties to take home, but what makes this experience so different is that fact that it takes place in a cafe, where you can eat the real-world version of what you’ve made at the same time.

▼ The meals you can eat and make are omurice (omelette rice) and spaghetti with meat sauce.

A food sample specialist will guide participants through the experience, providing all the materials, equipment and technical assistance necessary to ensure everyone goes home with a professional-quality food sample in just an hour.

Once you’ve made your food sample, it’ll take around 10-15 minutes to set in the oven, during which time you can take a seat and enjoy a drink while waiting for your food to arrive. Staff will bring both your food sample and real meal to your table at the same time, and the cafe recommends lining them up side-by-side for photos and videos, where you’ll be amazed at how similar they look.

▼ By adding ketchup to the omurice in a way that matches the look of the sample, and lifting the pasta with a fork, you’ll be able to share videos and photos that’ll go viral online.

The food samples are around 30-40 percent smaller than the real thing so they won’t take up a lot of room in your luggage, and you can also add your name and the date of your visit or a special occasion like a birthday to them. The cafe also offer courses without a sit-down meal, with the food sample-making experience taking one hour on its own, or 90 minutes for the course that includes real food.

▼ Located a short five-minute walk from Asakusa Station, the tourist-friendly cafe is suitable for adults and children aged six-and-up and has English instructions available.

Open from 24 September, the cafe is accepting online reservations now, with the food sample making course costing 4,600 yen (US$31.88) per person, or 5,600 yen for the course that includes a meal. It’s a wonderful way to create a unique memory…and a one-of-a-kind original souvenir that you can take home with you and enjoy forever.

Restaurant information
Food Sample Making Cafe / 食品サンプル製作体験カフェ
Address: Tokyo-to, Taito-ku, Hanakawado 1-13-13
東京都台東区花川戸1-13-13
Open 11:00 a.m.-9:00 p.m.
Closed Wednesdays
Website

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