San Diego Home & Garden - July 2003

Go into Seaport Village's Greek Islands Cafe and what you see is what you get. Sort of. The meals look at you from the wall ---beautiful, colorful fresh, three-dimensional, real: gyro meat, souvlaki, spanakopita, dolmades --- only question is, why don't they fall off?

Answer? They're plastic, molded and painted by Francesco Dorigo and his merry faux food makers in Vista. Everybody from restaurateurs to grocery-chain owners to movie producers come to Francesco asking him to create fake food that can stand extreme close-ups still fool the viewer.

Back in 1989, Dorigo, a chef, wanted to branch out from cooking. For a while he struggled with a bronze sculpture business until a Church's Chicken franchisee came and asked him to create faux cooked chickens for their display case. The plastic fakes he made saved them so much real chicken and corn, Church's became a steady customer. Wal-Mart, Albertsons and others soon followed.

Today Francesco gets orders worldwide. His most popular item? Fake kale for salad bars.

"Putting our kale in a display case can save a restaurant $90 a week," says Francesco's assistant, Michelle McConnell. " And yes, people do mistakenly try to eat some of our products. Especially the candied apples."

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