Product Description

All across Japan, parents come up with unique ways to bring attention to their children's lunch boxes. And what better way to make children eat than to turn their midday meals into a cartoon? With Face Food, Christopher D Salyers documents the very real phenomenon of crafting food into visually creative and appealing forms, such as Pikachu, Daraemon and Cindarella, bringing health, heart and imagination to the bento box. How-to guides and articles by designers and chefs accompany photographs, all of which illuminate the dynamic reasons behind this wholly Japanese pursuit.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #239249 in Books
• Published on: 2008-03-25
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 80 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780979048661
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

Customer Reviews

Another Approach to the Lunchbox Dilemma
Christopher D. Salyers introduces us to an art form little known outside of Japan in this beautiful little book FACE FOOD. He spent time in Tokyo investigating this curiosity about the manner in which Japanese children take their lunch to school. What he has explored is a tradition of food preparation dating back to the Kamakura Period (1185 - 1333), a time when the Bento Boxes (`charaben') were first created.

As with so many aspects of living in the Japanese view - from floral arrangements to tea ceremonies and flamboyant sushi preparation for hungry audiences at a sushi bar - the mothers of school children take great pride in creating little artworks out of the lunchbox items we usually just wrap in waxed paper. The foods are sculpted and arranged to form pictures: vegetable slices, fish cakes, cheese, eggs, fruits and, of course, rice are juxtaposed to resemble children's favorite popular cartoon characters or simply fantasy arrangements. And what Salyers brings to this collection of color photographs of the charaben creations is a social background of the mothers who gather to prepare these FOOD FACES, vying for the most inspired as well as the most nutritional product!

The bulk of this book is devoted to photographs of the Bento Boxes, with the menu contained in each collection explained as well as the culinary `artist' being credited. Not only is this a fascinating little book to read and enjoy, it is also yet another art form that few of us in the West know. Perhaps we should take a hint at viewing sculpted food products as replacement for our fast food laziness - and at the same time find the pleasure in creating nutritional works for the children to proudly carry to school! Grady Harp, March 08

face food is great eye candy
If you need recipes and cooking guides this is NOT your book. There are many other books with recipes (Bento Boxes: Japanese Meals on the Go, and Manga University Culinary Institute's: Manga Cookbook both come to mind), and many groups (like eat_my_bento on livejournal) just waiting to help you figure out how to make bento. What this book offers is inspiration; Stunning, unbelievable, "how did they DO that" inspiration.

Focusing on "character bento" this book is full of pictures of theme bento boxes. From the simple and "easy to picture myself doing" box depicting three little pigs (the pigs are rice balls with ham ears and noses)to the Disney Cinderella who is depicted with enough realism (in ham and cheese and spices) to look like a licensed image!

there are NO instructions given on how to duplicate these bento Boxes. the only "instructions" are for the two line drawings in the back by the author suggesting a "Pac Man" and starry sky scene bento box. The ingredient listing given for each box is helpful, but doesn't tell you what is being used in which area of the design. This book is mostly useful for inspiring you to try something a bit beyond the "hot dog octopus" of the typical bento box.

A picture is worth a thousand words? I think not...
Pretty pictures...lots of them. (Though I did expect them to be in high gloss, not just printed on the page - The colors seem muted.)
Not practical for actually reconstructing said Bentos, there are no directions (other than for some cheesy "beginner" ones in the appendix.) Under a picture of your desired character it will simply say "ham, eggs, nori, fishcake, rice, cucumber. . ." you have to figure out what made what. Amazing pictures, though! Enough so that I don't own this book yet (sat in Barnes and Noble and perused it for 30 minutes) but I intend to make it one of my next purchases.