Las Vegas Weekly

You art what you eat

Panda Party consists of rice and nori.

Everyone has had a heart broken by a beautifully photographed entrée that seemed lackluster once the plate reached the table. But this doesn’t always have to be the case. Nope. Sometimes your food can be cute. Really cute. So fucking cute you won’t even want to eat it.

Charaben, or “character bento boxes,” is a food phenomenon practiced by mothers who care about their children’s happiness far more than my “eat this ham sandwich or starve” mother ever did. It’s the act — the art, really — of presenting food in the form of other things — cute animals, adorable anime characters and other “aww”-inducing images.

Christopher D. Salyers, the author of Face Food: The Visual Creativity of Japanese Bento Boxes and Face Food Recipes: A How-To Guide, explains that Japanese mothers partake in this “very Martha Stewart-y” phenomenon as a way to trick their children into getting excited about healthy foods. The practice is almost strictly Japanese, though some Americans have started to take notice, thanks to the almighty Internet and books like Salyers’.

The closest American counterpart is the custom-made cake, like those seen on Food Network’s Ace of Cakes, but the differences are dramatic.

Charaben is designed for everyday eats, not fancy weddings or movie premieres like those Charm City creations. Even when Americans do partake in charaben, as they’ve done for events held for Salyers’ books, the atmosphere is about one-upping competitor’s meals, rather than being humble and crafty for kids, according to the author.

He’s right, and I know it. I proved it after picking up Salyers’ books and deciding to take a stab at creating some charaben myself. A friend and I flipped through the books, trying to decide which bento box to recreate. Panda Party? Home Tutor Hitman Reborn!? (I don’t get it, either.) Mock Lobster?

None sufficed, so we decided to craft our own, Vegas-inspired charaben.

Photo: April Corbin

Meet Jenny.

Meet Jenny.

She’s naked, made of bologna, roast beef, seaweed paper and egg, and wrapped around a Slim Jim pole. Set on a backdrop of rice colored with an unhealthy amount of food coloring. She’s everything charaben does not stand for, but hey, she’s proof that playing with your food is an acceptable Saturday-night activity for two bored 20-somethings.

If you decide to try charaben for yourself, doing so is easy. Recipes are plentiful online and in books like Face Food Recipes, and ingredients are easily found in your local grocery store. If you want to get all authentic and buy plastic bento display boxes like the ones in Japan, take a trek to the Chinatown Mall on Spring Mountain Road or Tokyo Discount on Tropicana Avenue and the 215.

We promise you’ll never look at food the same way again.