Fake Food of the NRA Show: A Retrospective

By Anthony Todd in Food on May 26, 2011 4:00PM

Our school lunches looked better than this.

It\'s really disturbing to pick up a \"martini\" and see the olive stay in the same place.

A seafood tableau. We were SAD to find out this one was fake.

The foam on top looks like something we\'d shave with. Actually, that\'s an idea - beer flavored shaving cream....

This is taking it to another level - not just fake shrimp, but fake ice.

What realism - even down to the browning around the edges as it gets stale.

Thank goodness for the sign - at least there\'s no confusion.

If a chef\'s prep area had tomatoes like this, we\'d call the health inspector.

The tomato gives this one away - it would so roll off.

This one was cheating - there were real waffles being made in the same booth!

Now this is just shameful - they aren\'t even trying!

Earlier in the week, we brought you our favorite signs of the National Restaurant Association show. Taken out of context, they provide endless comedy gold, but they don't represent the true artistic potential of the NRA. That honor falls to the fake food. Now, we should be clear: we're not talking about "fake food" in the enviro-local-nutritional sense. While there was plenty of fried/preserved/artificial junk food being hocked at NRA, when we say "fake," we mean plastic. It makes sense that a restaurant show would need to display food, and most of it was real and ready to be sampled. But a fair amount of food at the NRA was sculpted, and some was better than others. In fact, we almost broke our teeth on a couple pieces that weren't glued down. Would you have known better? Check out the gallery.