During some down time between shows at Berkeley Rep, I had the chance to learn to make some fake food. I have always admired the fake food in the windows of Japanese restaurants, and wanted to learn the methods of sample food shops like Ganso Foods, which I visited in Tokyo. Although I never had the chance to take their classes, I found some of their methods online, particularly one for tempura shrimp made of wax. I watched some of their videos and found a step by step instruction, which I replicated. The process involves melting wax, then pouring it from a medium height into warm water in a square shape. The dropping causes the wax to take a droplet shape. It took me a few tries to get the temperature of the water right, so that it wouldn’t harden right away, and also would not be too hot so that I could not touch it, or the wax stayed liquid. The perfect temperature causes the wax to slightly cool, but remain pliable so I could fold it around the shrimp tail.

I took time working out how to get the right color in the wax, as many of the dyes we had were not the right color, or did not incorporate properly into the melted wax. I ultimately melted some crayons into the wax to get the golden yellow color I liked best. However, I found that the one that was too brown looks a bit like a shrimp that was left in the fryer for too long! I took some tails from existing fake shrimp we had to put inside the shrimp.