Plastic Food

Many restaurants in Japan have plastic displays of the menu items outside.

料理のサンプル

日本のレストランのショーウインドーには、料理のサンプルおいてあります。でも本物ではありません。本物に似せて作った物です。本物とそくっりですね。お客はメニューで注文してもどんな料理がくるか分かりません。これなら安心ですよね。

Can you read the Japanese above?

It means:

“Restaurants in Japan have a show window with sample food. They’re not real, though. They’re fakes made to look like the actual items. They’re very realistic. It helps customers who don’t know what to order. This can be quite a relief, don’t you agree?”

Besides this, restaurants in Japan usually have photos of each item in the menu itself.
Of course this helps foreign visitors who can’t read Japanese, but it’s also helpful to those of us who can read the menu because it’s easy to decide what you want to eat when you can see the menu items rather than imagining them.

Do restaurants in your country have a system like this?