At 02:21 PM 3/10/97 +0000, Harry Needham wrote:
>My suggestion would be to take a walk down the rue des Bouchers, in Brussels.
>Quite a number of the restaurants which line this fantastic little street
>advertise their specialties with what appear to be plastic copies on the
street
>in front of the individual restaurants. I am told the copies all originate in
>Japan. And, if you don't see what you like, you can always have some
waterzooi,
>washed down, perhaps, with a Rochfort!

The following story (which relates to the topic of "fake food") is
nonetheless rather off-thread.  I offer it here, because I just couldn't
resist:

Some time ago, in the mid 1970s, a friend of mine and his girlfriend
visited Japan together. One of their goals as tourists was to leave the
tourist route and to go to a restaurant not used by tourists.  To achieve
this end they decided to try to find a restaurant that did not have a
display of "fake food" out front.  To their delight they soon found the
restaurant they were searching for: off on a side street, no fake food, and
a menu entirely in Japanese.  Presented with this essentially
undecipherable menu, the woman chose a dish (a noodle dish) because she
recognized the characters for it.  Her boyfriend, ever bold, decided to
take "pot-luck."  He chose the most expensive item on the menu.  Soon
enough, she received her noodles, and he, well, he got his order, too: a
scotch and soda.

R.Baron