Trendy Ice Cream Shop Specializes in Hyper-Realistic Edible Flower Bouquets

(THISIS)SHIZEN is a Kyoto-based café that has gained popularity mainly thanks to its artistic ice cream cones which resemble intricate flower bouquets.

We use the phrase ‘too beautiful to eat’ to describe food art pretty often here on Oddity Central, but the edible ice-cream bouquets created by (THISIS)SHIZEN really look too pretty to eat, regardless of how tasty they are. Featuring a botanical-themed decor containing potted plants and nature-inspired paintings, this relatively new Japanese café serves a variety of ice-cream bouquets that are only available for a limited time, depending on the season. You can treat yourself to creamy roses, lilac, Japanese camellia, and many more flavorful wonders.

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This Japanese Restaurant Makes the World’s Smallest Sushi

Tokyo restaurant Sushiya no Nohachi reportedly serves great sushi, but it is most famous for its gimmick – making the world’s smallest sushi with a single grain of rice.

Located in Asakusa, a slightly quieter part of Tokyo, Sushiya no Nohachi is the place to go if you want to enjoy the tiniest, most adorable sushi in the world. Each piece is made with only a grain of rice and a tiny slice of topping wrapped in the thinnest piece of nori. Every served piece is actually perfect, which hints at the amount of work and patience that goes into making them. They are the work of Hironori Ikeno, the chef of Sushiya no Nohachi, who came up with the idea in 2002 when a client asked him how small he could make his sushi. He answered, “as small as a grain of rice”, and proceeded to demonstrate that he wasn’t kidding. Over the years, the eatery became internationally famous for making the world’s smallest sushi.

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Japanese Food Artist Creates Anime-Inspired Cake Icing Masterpieces

Izumi is a young Japanese food artist who specializes in detailed cake icing artworks inspired by popular manga and anime characters.

We’ve featured some incredible cake artists over the last 12 years, from the super-talented Sarah Hardy, who can create edible replicas of just about anything, to Chinese patissier Zhou Yi, whose creations look more like porcelain dolls than sugar paste, but when it comes to anime-inspired cake art, Japanese artist Izumi is in a class of her own. One of her latest projects, an edible, three-dimensional rendition of Kaoru Hakaze from the Ensemble Stars! video game recently went viral, and that’s how most people discovered her impressive portfolio of cake decorations.

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Father-Son Duo Create Incredible Pancake Art That’s Just Too Good to Eat

Tiger Tomato, a father-son team from Melbourne, Australia, has been making waves online for their incredibly detailed and colorful pancake art.

We’ve featured some cool edible art in general and pancake art in particular here on Oddity Central, but the creations of Tiger Tomato are definitely a welcome addition to our growing collection. The father-son duo, who prefer not to be named, started posting videos of themselves making elaborate pancakes back in 2015, and in the seven years since, they’ve built quite a following on social media. Their vids regularly go viral, and once you watch some of them, you’ll understand why.

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Japanese Artist Creates the Most Intricate Food Carvings

Armed with an Xacto knife and mountains of patience, Japanese artist Gaku turns all kinds of fruits and vegetables into ephemeral works of art.

Inspired by the Japanese traditional food carving art mukimono, Gaku takes fruits or vegetables from the grocery store and carves them into a variety of intriguing patterns, from geometrical designs to traditional motifs and symbols, and even animal models. But apart from the skill and patience required to create these stunning food carvings, the most impressive thing about Gaku is his speed, as many times the artistic process is a race against time to make sure that oxidation doesn’t ruin his artwork. Weh working on apples or other produce that tends to oxidize quickly, he has to finish his designs in just a few minutes and still have time to photograph them.

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Italian Artist Turns Spilled Coffee Into Art

Some people are so incredibly talented that they can be artistically inspired by the most unexpected of things, such as spilled drinks. Case in point – Italian artist Giulia Bernardelli, whose amazing coffee art began as a mishap.

One day, Giulia was drawing and having her coffee at the same time. At one point, she moved her hand too quickly and spilled her coffee all over the canvas, but the way the coffee stain spread inspired her to pick up the spoon and use it as a brush, to guide the brown liquid. And that’s how her journey into coffee art began. She got better and better at it, and today Bernardelli is regarded as one of the world’s best coffee artists.

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These Handmade 3D Cookie Frostings Will Blow Your Mind

Generally speaking, frosted cookies are among the simplest, most basic desserts you can find, but that description certainly doesn’t apply to the artistic masterpieces created by Japanese food artist Izumi.

Saying that Izumi’s frosted cookies look too good to eat is an understatement. It’s damn near impossible to believe that they are 100% edible, not to mention eating one of them must feel like ruining a timeless masterpiece. The Japanese food artist uses his talent to create incredible three-dimensional cookie decorations by hand and has developed the skill to recreate almost any anime character.  The 3D aspect is also awe-inspiring, with some characters looking ready to jump off of the cookie.

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Bento Artist Creates Insanely Detailed Edible Portraits

A talented bento artist from Hiroshima, Japan, has been turning a lot of heads online with their incredibly detailed edible black portraits over a white rice background.

Nori bento is the most common forms of the portable Japanese snack, but one Japanese food artist has managed to turn the simplicity of the classic meal into an impressive art form. Miki Matsuura creates bento portraits so detailed it makes eating them a travesty. She carves the edible black layer so meticulously that the resulting portraits look almost drawn on the white rice with a black pencil, like manga characters. But while the artist posts photos of her art on social media, they aren’t made specifically for people’s entertainment, but as an actual lunch for Miki’s husband.

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Award-Winning Artist Creates Ultra-Realistic Sugar Flowers

Michelle Nguyen is a talented sugar flower artist whose creations are so insanely realistic that you can hardly tell them apart from the real thing.

Melbourne-based Michelle Nguyen is one of the world’s leading sugar flower artists, and looking at her portfolio, it’s easy to see why. From the life-like sugar petals, to the stunningly-detailed leaves, and the perfect color, there’s nothing separating her edible flowers from the actual plants that inspired them. Nguyen’s artworks are so impressive that she is constantly traveling the world attending events and teaching her craft to students wanting to master the art of making sugar flowers.

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Egyptian Artist Paints with Honey, Chocolate, And Other Delicious Foods

Sally Magdy Murad, is a young Egyptian artist who has adopted some rather unusual mediums to express her talents. She creates portraits of iconic Arab personalities using things like honey, chocolate, syrup and more.

While most of us were spending lockdowns binging on Netflix or just losing our minds from boredom, Egyptian artist Sally Magdy was experimenting with new ways to put her talents on display. During the long quarantine periods of last year, the 25-year-old started inventing her own painting tools for use with some special paints – honey, syrup, chocolate, jams, pomegranate juice, and more. As she experimented, Sally came up with new mediums to try, and her art gradually became more complex.

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Food Artist Creates Edible Portraits of Popular Anime Characters

Kaisefu Mudazono is a self-taught food artist who uses all sorts of ingredients, from dried seaweed and pickled vegetables, to ham and rice, to create the most amazing edible artworks.

When it comes to food art, it’s hard to find something more adorable, and at the same time impressive, than  kyaraben (or Charaben), the Japanese art form of arranging various foods to create eye-catching designs. When done right, kyaraben turns out almost too good to eat, and Kaisefu Mudazono is definitely a master at it. Whether expressing her creative talent on a bento box, or on her grandchildren’s bowls, she always manages to impress.

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Could You Eat These Unbelievably Cute Fish-Shaped Dumplings?

A Taiwanese self-taught cook recently shared photos of her detailed and incredibly adorable fish-shaped dumplings, and they justifiably went viral.

Dumplings come in all shapes and sizes, from the classic half-moon, to the scary-looking alien Warusobo dumplings, but have you ever seen any dumplings cuter than those made by Taipei-based Minmin Chang? The Taiwanese woman took social media by storm last week, after posting photos of her adorable fish-shaped dumplings, along with detailed instructions on how to make your own. The problem is no matter how delicious these treats are, there is no way I’m eating them. They look too darn good!

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Too Beautiful to Eat – The Hand-Painted Macarons of Anna Zhirova

Anna Zhirova is a self-taught food artist from Russia who specializes in hand-painting macarons to create unique edible works of art.

An architect by profession, Anna Zhirova came up with the idea of hand-painting macarons completely by accident, but she found the idea fascinating. She had been drawing for as long as she could remember, but the thought of decorating the tiny treats and creating designer macarons was very intriguing. Over time Anna developed both a technique to create the perfect canvas for her art, and the right consistency for the edible food dyes she uses.

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Talented Chef Makes Pancake Portraits Inspired by Pop Culture Icons and Anime Characters

Keisuke Inagaki, who describes himself as the “otaku chef” of La Ricetta Restaurant in Zama, Japan, has combined his two biggest passions – cooking and anime – to create his own style of pancake art.

The 51-year-old Japanese chef started making cute pancakes in 2011, as a way of lifting the spirits of kids in his home city of Fukushima, after it was devastated by a tsunami. He had volunteered for a program to take care of young children in a safe area after the nuclear disaster, and was looking for ways to get their attention. He had seen the pancake art of Nathan Shields on the internet, so he decided to give it a try himself, to impress the kids. That was only his starting point in the world of pancake art, though, as today Inagaki as on a whole other level.

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Confectioner Creates Exquisite Cookies That Look Inedible, in a Good Way

Cookies come in all shapes and sizes, but few look as exquisite as those of Costa Rican confectioner Lorena Rodriguez, founder of Lorena’s Sweets.

Looking at the edible works of art created by Lorena Rodriguez, once doesn’t know if to eat them or hang them up on a wall somewhere, for everyone to see. Some of the experienced confectioner’s cookies certainly don’t look like the variety you find in most cookie jars, that’s for sure. They range from realistic-looking paintings with elaborate, gilded frames, designs inspired by rococo architecture, and edible Christmas decorations. They consist of a Danish-style cookie expertly decorated with a high-quality fondant molded into shape using silicone molds.

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