In the right hands, anything in the world can become art. From dresses made of meat to sculptural whales made of recycled plastic, it’s perfectly possible for anything on Earth to be taken and transformed into what we’re at least told is art.
And as we’re far from artists ourselves, who are we to argue?
The thing is though, one of the everyday foods most will come across from time to time is hard to consider anything but art in its own right. Take a trip to even the simplest sushi takeaway and it’s hard not to be blown away by pretty much every piece of the stuff you lay eyes on. The colours, the shapes, the contrasts, the textures and so much more – sushi is uniquely beautiful in its own right.
Of course, there will always be those that do their best to take things one or two steps further than everyone else – sushi chefs being no different. Just this week, a certain sushi takeaway in Liverpool caught our eye after it decided…for some reason…to build its own World Cup stadium using nothing but sushi. It was of course a fair bit smaller than the real deal, but the grass, fans, players and nets were all there…and decidedly fishy.
“I thought this would be a great idea to really show our support for our players both here in England and in Japan where our chefs are from,” the sushi master told the local press.
And the whole thing went down a treat with both the staff at the restaurant and the diners. It was of course too complicated and time-consuming to find its way onto the restaurant’s menu, but the diners that did catch a glimpse of it were in large pretty blown away.
The thing is though, take a look beyond the local sushi takeaway and you’ll soon see that sushi art is neither new nor niche – it’s everywhere. A quick search online is really all that’s needed to find a million and one examples of sushi art, ranging from sushi rolls with the face of Barack Obama inside right through to an iPhone made entirely out of sushi rice. Admittedly some of the creations look more appetizing than others, but it’s still impressive to see what’s possible in the hands of those with a flair for creativity.
Of course, ask a sushi purist about the whole subject and chances are you’ll get nothing but a frowned grunt as a response. Traditionalists believe that sushi is the kind of thing that’s already art in its own right, which in turn means that to try in any way to push things too far is to corrupt the whole idea at its heart. Presentation tweaks and all manner of weird and wonderful recipes are fine, but when it comes to recreating famous paintings or cartoons with neon-died sushi rice, they’re less than enthused.
