T he silver-stripe round herring is a delicate fish with a metallic band along its flanks. It can only be eaten fresh in the area where it’s caught – the warm waters of southern Japan in Kagoshima prefecture. Served as kibinago sashimi, it has become a regional delicacy: tiny shiny fish served on a plate, coiled like chainmail.
If your 2024 travel plans don’t include Kagoshima, you could instead head to Kensington, London, to see this dish. From October, a very special version of kibinago sashimi will be on display at the Japan House cultural centre as part of Looks Delicious! This is the UK’s first exhibition of sampuru , the realistic food replicas used in Japan in place of printed menus. The show’s curator, Simon Wright, director of programming at Japan House, said: “Anyone who’s been to Japan will have seen food replicas outside restaurants and no doubt been intrigued; they are not really found anywhere else in the world.
The opportunity to see them outside the country is rare: there hasn’t been an exhibition like this before in the UK – and there probably hasn’t been one created this way in Japan either.” Takizo Iwasaki, a businessman from Gujō Hachiman in Gifu prefecture, started making sampuru for restaurants in the early 1930s. At the time, restaurants were proliferating and many had started selling western-inspired dishes – known as yōshoku – unfamiliar to customers.
Iwasaki’s brainwave was to recreate dishes from wax so people could.