Rihga Royal Hotel Planetary Chocolates

Combining astronomy and good eats sounds too good to be true. But in their celestial collection of planetary chocolates, chocolatier L’éclat of the Righa Royal Hotel Japan have done just that. The chocolaty solar system includes Mercury (coconut mango), Venus (cream lemon), Earth (cacao), Mars (orange praline), Jupiter (vanilla), Saturn (rum raisin), Uranus (milk tea) and Neptune (capuccino) – sorry, pluto is no longer considered a planet.
Each are sold individually (400 yen) but if you order the set (3,800 yen) they’ll throw in the Sun – a flaring delicacy of criollo chocolate and pineapple. You can order online (3,200 yen; Sun not included)or you can use a forwarding service.


But if meteorites are more your thing, they’ve got a collection of those as well, featuring 8 chocolates modeled after major meteorites that have been discovered around the world.
(thanks for the tip masako!)
source: ufunk | L’éclat

Concrete Plates

Two of my favorite materials: concrete and wood. What’s not to love about these concrete plates by Nir Meiri. Albeit, they have got to be heavy… but nobody’s talking about throwing out the china. No matter the food displayed, it is sure to provide the perfect accent, completing the combination of textures and natural colors. Just tell your Greek brother in-law to be careful where he’s smashing plates with this one. OPA!!
Designer: Nir Meiri

3D printers create edible objects

Miniature space shuttles made of ground scallops and cheese, above, are among the masterpieces created by a 3D food printer at Cornell University. ((Cornell University/French Culinary Institute) )

An engineering lab and a culinary school have teamed up to construct novel edible objects with 3D printers that use pureed foods in place of ink.
Miniature space shuttles made of ground scallops and cheese are among the masterpieces that had already been made using 3D food printers designed by the computational synthesis laboratory at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y.
The lab is collaborating with the New York City-based French Culinary Institute to make new edible creations through a project called fab@home.

Keeping the Barista Art Intact

Don’t you love the artwork a barista creates in your coffee? I adore it and try to keep the foam intact until the last drop. Unfortunately mixing in the sugar always ruins it, but if I have something like the “Mix”,  I could savor my drink and enjoy the art. It’s a ceramic stirrer that funnels the sugar to the bottom without disturbing the delicate foam. It may seem frivolous to some, but I look at it from a coffee-lover’s perspective; anything to make my cuppa perfect!

ärta - Tea Leaf Infuser

Love this Tea Leaf Infuser by ärta. Sweet and simple. Via Baker's Mark.

Poteki by Kazuhito Ishida

Another great find from the Oyatsu Dougu exhibition is Poteki, a play on the Japanese word for potato chips (abbreviated as potechi) and the word for tree (ki). I love everything about this potato chip tree from the packaging design to the execution of the product. In fact, assumingly due to popular demand, the designer, Kazuhito Ishida, recently began offering them for sale (840 yen) on his website.

Glass Food Covers by Switch Design

click images to enlarge
Hiromi Taki and Tomonori Ohata, the design duo known as Switch, created these glass food covers. Each was designed for a specific type of snack – onigiri (rice ball), shu cream (cream puff) and a slice of cake – and debuted last year in the Oyatsu Dougu exhibition, a show dedicated to showcasing tools and accessories related to my favorite meal, snack time.  They were hand-blown by Sayaka Kanazu, a craftswoman based in Toyama.

Cookie Spoon Delight!

Instead of wasteful plastic and wooden stirrers, why not use an ecookie? Dense enough to keep a satisfying crunch when stirring yet scrumptiously delicious as that extra little treat.

Designer: Victor Lopes Mascarenhas & Rodrigo Maia

konbini bento

There are over 43,000 konbini (or convenience stores) across Japan with over a billion monthly visitors. Daily-packaged lunches and other foods like the ones seen above, make up about 35% of sales (or about 230 billion yen) The average cost of items I purchased were about 400 yen. I can therefore extrapolate that in a single month customers purchased about 570 million items like the ones seen above.  I love konbini bento and I wish they had them in the States but, for the sake of the planet, I’m glad they don’t.
*data source (PDF)

Glowbelly Steamboat by Tan Lun Cheak

Singaporean designer Tan Lun Cheak of Little Thoughts Group has created a glass table lamp that can be used to cook food.

Called Glowbelly Steamboat, the components of the lamp can be reconfigured to form a hot pot or steamboat, where food is cooked at the table by dipping it into a simmering pot of stock.

Made from pyroceramic glass, the product can be placed directly over a small portable stove on the table.

The project is on show as part of an exhibition entitled Imprints: Designing for Memories at the National Museum of Singapore.

Till You Stop by Mischer’Traxler

Vienna Design Week 2010: here’s another machine by Mischer’Traxler (see their Nespresso Battery in our earlier story), this time a device for automatically decorating cakes.

Visitors press a button to start the contraption, which pipes icing in a hypotrochoid pattern, like a Spirograph toy, until the visitor releases the button.

Silver balls are then added until the user presses stop.

In this way the user decides when enough decoration has been applied, since the machine cannot be restarted until a new cake is inserted.

Called Till You Stop, the project was presented as part of an exhibition entitled Design Criminals at the MAK museum of applied and contemporary arts, which revisits Adolf Loos’ 1908 essay Ornament and Crime.

See all our stories about Vienna Design Week »

The following details are from the designers:

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‘Till you stop’ – cake decoration
mischer’traxler
for the exhibition ‘Design Criminals or A new joy into the world’ – a cooperation of MAK and departure, curated by Sam Jacob.
confectioner – ‘Till you stop’ – cake decoration
How much is too much?
‘Till you stop’ – cake decoration is an idea for a cake decoration method that allows the costumer/visitor to decide how much decoration is applied onto the cake. A simple machine decorates the cake with lines and continuously decorates until the costumer/visitor decides to stop the decoration process. Then in a second process sugar pearls/decoration are dropped onto the glazing. The decor is continuously changing and the costumer/visitor decides whether he prefers a simple ornament or a more complex one. When is the right time to stop? Once the decoration machine is stopped it can not be started again.
The project reflects, on the one hand, the industry behind decoration (industrialised image vs. the romantic imagination) and on the other hand it should trigger people to think about the amount of decoration they actually like.

Process:
an automated cake decoration process (sugar glazing and sugar decoration) can be started and stopped by the buyer / visitor.
Step one: the cake rotates and the sugar glazing gets applied in lines. The pattern is similar to the ones of ‘Spirographs’ which can be applied over a longer period of time.
Step two:  the cake with glazing turns and single sugar pearls fall on the cake.
On Tuesday the 5th of October, 15 visitors at the ‘MAK Design NITE – eyes wide shut’ will have the possibility to decorate a cake with the decoration machine. The event is part of VIENNA DESIGN WEEK 2010

apong seafood grill by Sciencewerk

• apong is a traditional seafood grill restaurant indigenously from makassar(a major fishing center town in sulawesi) with abundant selection of cooking style originated from indochina and indonesian culture itself.  the idea of the overall brand direction is a fuse between indochinese and makassar culture in contemporary / modern approach.  the circular shape with the illustration seafood  pattern portrays an excitement, abundance, was inspired by the zen circle in chinese culture;  in forthright idea to show sea creatures gathered in an plate showing bountifulness. the identity is combined by a strong typographic composition to make the brand stands out among the other seafood grill restaurants.  http://sciencewerk.net/static/apong-seafood/
• 
  = Logo
• 
  = Pattern
• 
  = Collaterals
• 
  = Collaterals
• 
  = Market Style Take Away Fish Wrap
• 
  = Interior
• 
  = Bar Section
• 
  = Outdoor

Aurelien Barbry Wine Stoppers and Pourers

Image via Notcot.

These new cork wine stoppers and pourers by Aurelien Barbry for Norman Copenhagen are super nice! The wine stoppers are a sculptural play on the traditional wine cork (they look like little mushrooms!), and the wine pourer looks like a cork stopper, but then pulls apart to reveal the metal pourer...

Via Notcot.

Fujiyama beer glass

I climbed Mt. Fuji with my Mom when I was about 10 years old. At the time I wasn’t old enough to drink, but that’s all right because this Fujiyama beer glass hadn’t been designed yet. I like the tagline, which reads, “drink it down at Fuji.”

Designed by Keita Suzuki, the Fujiyama Glass (3,776 yen) won the Mizuno Manabu Award at a design contest in 2008. It was just recently commercialized with Mizuno Manabu himself taking on the packaging design. They encourage you to see the many phases of Mt. Fuji by experimenting with different drinks. For example, tomato juice would create a Mt. Fuji sunset.

click images to enlarge
Fun Fact: did you know that the top of Mt. Fuji is technically nowhere? It doesn’t fall under the jurisdiction of either Shizuoka or Yamanashi prefecture. In 1974, the supreme court shot down the state and ruled in favor of a Shinto shrine, arguing that it was the embodiment of the gods of Mt. Fuji and therefore all the land above the 8th station is sacred and belongs to the shrine. [source]

wasara biodegradable paper tableware from japan

cups


wasara products by japanese design studio simplicity (shinichiro ogata) were exhibited as part of designboom's 'asia now' exhibition held at dwell on design in los angeles. 'sometimes we associate asia in general with copies of original designs that were conceived of elsewhere. this is unfortunate and often unwarranted. for the 'asia now' exhibition we were looking for truly unique work that is not too influenced by western styles.'

designboom
wasara elevates disposable tableware to a new level. the earth-conscious product is made from tree-free renewable materials: bamboo, reed pulp and sugar cane fiber and is fully biodegradable and compostable. the sturdy and simple designs fit comfortably into one's hand.


the cups have a handle which doubles as a spout



bowls






square plates



the plate has a groove to accommodate the hand



detail of the stacked plates



tray with dipping bowl



circular plates



tray



cup



studies in form



wasara tableware in use



wasara tableware collection




wasara tableware packaging


fibres used to make wasara tableware



wasara tableware at the 'asia now' exhibition
image © designboom

the wasara tableware has been shown as part of the japanese sector of designboom's curated
exhibition 'asia now'.



image © designboom