Tokyo restaurant Sushiya no Nohachi reportedly serves great sushi, but it is most famous for its gimmick – making the world’s smallest sushi with a single grain of rice.

Located in Asakusa, a slightly quieter part of Tokyo, Sushiya no Nohachi is the place to go if you want to enjoy the tiniest, most adorable sushi in the world. Each piece is made with only a grain of rice and a tiny slice of topping wrapped in the thinnest piece of nori. Every served piece is actually perfect, which hints at the amount of work and patience that goes into making them. They are the work of Hironori Ikeno, the chef of Sushiya no Nohachi, who came up with the idea in 2002 when a client asked him how small he could make his sushi. He answered, “as small as a grain of rice”, and proceeded to demonstrate that he wasn’t kidding. Over the years, the eatery became internationally famous for making the world’s smallest sushi.

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A retiring Dutch cook who wanted to say goodbye to her colleagues in a special way cooked a cannabis-infused space cake for them as a surprise. It didn’t go well…

The retiring cook, known only as Mariska, had worked in a Zeeland hotel alongside her colleagues for a long time and wanted to part ways with them in a memorable way. They had discussed the cannabis-infused space cake many times in the past but had never gotten around to actually making it together, so she decided to make one for them, as a parting gift. On February 8th, on her last day on the job, she greeted her colleagues and left the workplace, but not before leaving behind a surprise cake for her colleagues along with a note advising them to only eat it after working hours. Unfortunately, some of them just couldn’t wait.

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A Japanese candy company has been making national news headlines for its idea to produce gummy candy that tastes like an ‘imaginary fruit’ called Kiraspika (キラスピカ).

Last year was a great one for gummy candy producers, and the market continued to expand throughout 2023, with fruit-flavored gummies being the most popular. While there are plenty of fruit flavors to choose from, including intriguing fruit combinations, companies are still limited to the fruits available in our world. But what if someone broke down barriers and started making candy that tastes like imaginary fruits? That was the genius idea that Japanese sweets maker Kanro recently came up with. Last month, the company launched a new type of gummy candy that tastes like ‘Kiraspika no Mi’, a made-up fruit with an original flavor, design, and even an origin story.

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A popular restaurant in Tokyo, Japan, sparked controversy for claiming to dip its delicious pork skewers in a sauce jar that has not been cleaned in over half a century.

Abe-chan, a famous pork skewer eatery in Tokyo’s Azabu Juban shopping district, was recently featured on a popular Japanese television show where it was revealed that one of the secrets to its success was a rather dubious-looking jar covered in a gelatinous mass. Apparently, this was the same sauce jar that pork skewers have been dipped in for the last sixty years, and the dark brown mass around the jar is the sauce that spilled over and hardened over the decades. According to the third-generation owner of Abe-chan, the jar has never been cleaned in the last six decades, which apparently contributes to the rich taste of the sauce.

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A Japanese producer of milk and dairy products came up with an ingenious way of motivating kids to finish their milk bottles at lunch – decorating the bottles with manga comics.

Seki Milk, a milk producer and processor in Japan’s Gifu Prefecture, has been providing its products to local schools, but in recent years the company had seen consumption of milk drop significantly. According to its own research, the majority of school students (around 65% of them) were not finishing their milk bottles at lunch, which caused unnecessary food waste and also deprived them of calcium and other valuable nutrients. However, if you’re a parent, you probably already know that getting kids to eat things that are good for them isn’t the easiest thing in the world. Luckily, Seki Milk came up with an original and fun way to motivate children to finish their milk – manga bottles.

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A UK designer claims to be the first to ever make ice cream with vanilla flavoring sourced from recycled plastic. While no one has tasted it yet, it’s supposed to taste just like regular vanilla ice cream.

As part of her final-year project at Central Saint Martins Design School, Eleonora Ortolani set out to do something no one else had ever attempted before, at least to her knowledge – use a small amount of plastic to make ice cream flavoring. The project, titled Guilty Flavours, was inspired by the young designer’s frustration with how plastic was generally being recycled: being made into products that couldn’t be recycled any further, because it had been mixed with resins or other materials, which she thought was only making the problem worse. Having recently heard about a species of worm that could digest plastic bags, she started wondering if there was any way humans could eat plastic, break it down, and eliminate it for good.

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Videos of people grilling ice cubes and seasoning them with sauces and spices have been doing the rounds on Chinese social media and leaving people with unanswered questions.

Move over, stir-fried stones, it’s time for grilled ice cubes to enjoy their time in the social media spotlight. According to a number of news reports from China, the bizarre street snack was made famous by a short clip shot at a street food stall in Nanchang, Jiangxi Province. In it, we can see large ice cubes being cooked on an open grill and seasoned with sauces and spices, before being served on a plate. We can’t see anyone actually eating the dish, but it is apparently very popular on hot summer days, especially since it’s offered as a free treat.

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A Spanish restaurant recently paid 30,000 euros ($32,800) for a 2.2kg (4.85 lbs) piece of handmade cheese, thus setting a new world record for the most expensive piece of cheese.

Every year, in the last week of August, the town of Las Arenas de Cabrales hosts a contest where the best pieces of Cabrales cheese are auctioned off to the highest bidder. This year, Llagar de Colloto, a restaurant in Oviedo, Spain, paid a whopping 30,000 euros for a piece of Cabrales cheese made by hand from cow and goat milk and matured for several months in a cave in Los Picos de Europa mountains. Made by the Los Puertos cheese factory from Poo de Cabrales, the 2.2kg piece of cheese was selected by the jury as the best of the cheeses of fifteen producers who participated in the contest and was the most coveted in the subsequent auction.

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Gordos, a popular restaurant in Holon, Israel, has been getting a lot of attention online because of its latest dessert – a real toilet bowl full of chocolate ice cream.

I don’t care how much you like chocolate ice cream, you can’t tell me that you don’t find “Third House of Shit”, the controversial dessert available at Gordos just a little bit off-putting. Don’t get me wrong, I for one would still shovel the entire bowl down my throat, but I’d have to get over my initial disgust to do it. I mean, just look at it! The smeared toilet bowl and the way the chocolate ice cream is shaped like turds, it’s definitely not the most appetizing dessert I’ve ever seen. But I guess the wow factor is more important, and so far the unusual dessert has been getting a lot of attention on social media.

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Bijin-Hime, aka ‘Beautiful Princess’, is a Japanese strawberry variety that is perfectly shaped and colored and offers an unmatched flavor. It also costs up to $350 a piece, making it one of the world’s most expensive fruits.

Developed by Mikio Okuda, a Japanese farmer with over 45 years of experience growing strawberries, over 15 years of trial and error, Bijin-Hime is one of the world’s most highly regarded strawberry varieties. The largest fruits are about the size of a tennis ball and weigh around 100 grams, but it’s not the size that makes the Beautiful Princess special. Well, actually, it is, but not in the way you expect. Generally, the larger a strawberry is, the less flavor and sweetness it has, but that is certainly not the case with Bijin-Hime strawberries. They are rated at 13 degrees Brix, which makes them considerably sweeter than the 10-degree Brix strawberry standard, and have a flavor reminiscent of roses.

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Burger King Thailand recently shocked the fast food world with its latest addition to the menu – a ‘real cheeseburger’ that consists of 20 slices of cheese between two sesame burger buns.

The Real Cheeseburger hit Burger King locations across Thailand last Sunday and immediately went viral online. People started posting photos of the tower-like burger, expressing their disbelief that something like this was actually being sold as food. Many people still didn’t believe it was anything more than a stunt, but Burger King clarified that “This is no joke. This is for real,” via its social media channels. The unusual burger, which consists of 20 slices of American cheese stacked between two buns, comes with no sauce, pickles, and most importantly, no meat patty. By some accounts, the cheese is sometimes not even grilled or melted.

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An international team of scientists has reportedly created a genetically-modified ‘superbanana’ that contains significantly more nutrients, especially vitamin A.

Vitamin A deficiency has been plaguing poor countries in sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia for hundreds of years, inhibiting children’s growth, causing blindness and significantly weakening their resistance to deadly treatable diseases such as diarrhea and measles. The World Health Organization estimates that 190 million preschool-aged children worldwide are deficient in vitamin A and that malnutrition accounts for 6% of early childhood deaths in Africa alone. Luckily, a cheap and viable solution to malnutrition and vitamin A deficiency, in particular, may be available in the very near future…

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A ramen restaurant in Yunlin, Taiwan, recently unveiled its latest menu entry – Godzilla Ramen, a bowl of ramen soup with a braised crocodile leg sticking out of it.

Taiwanese ramen has been getting weirder and weirder in the last few weeks. It all started with the isopod ramen we featured at the end of last month, which featured a giant isopod as the main ingredient. Then it was the ‘Frog Frog Frog Ramen‘ by Yuan Ramen (圓拉麵), which featured a giant unpeeled frog, and recently culminated with another Yunlin area ‘delicacy’, a crocodile ramen aptly named ‘Godzilla Ramen’. The dish is reportedly made with 40 different spices, but the main ingredient literally sticking out of the bowl is a braised crocodile leg.

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Suodiu is a bizarre type of Chinese street food that consists of small river rocks stir-fried with a mixture of spices and herbs. You are supposed to suck on the stones and then spit them out.

Roughly translated as ‘suck and throw away’, suodiu is believed to have been invented hundreds of years ago by boatmen who would prepare the dish when they became stranded in the middle of the river with no real food while delivering goods. To trick their stomachs, they would stir-fry some river pebbles with various condiments and then suck the stones dry. The traditional dish was passed down through several generations, and today roadside vendors in China can sometimes be seen stir-frying bunches of river rocks with cilli oil, garlic sauce, garlic cloves and a mixture of spices.

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A Chinese farmer claims to have successfully created a hybrid fruit that allows people to enjoy the taste of both melon and watermelon in equal measure.

A 40-something watermelon farmer from Fuyang, in China’s Anhui province, referred to only as Mr. A by Chinese news outlets recently lit up Weibo, China’s version of Twitter, with photos of a strange-looking fruit that he claimed was half-melon and half-watermelon. He had apparently documented his efforts to create a melon-watermelon hybrid for a while, but last week he posted the fruits of his labor on Weibo, claiming that he had finally achieved success after several failed attempts. The unusual fruits look like watermelons growing on top of melons, which he claims allows people to enjoy the taste of both fruits at the same time.

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