The humble meat cake has had its profile raised by actress Amy Sedaris, featuring in the background of her new TruTV show At Home With Amy Sedaris. Sedaris’ cake featured deli meats such as pepperoni roses and mushroom shaped mini-meat cakes. While the presentation was revolutionary for American audiences, meat cakes have long been popular in Japan.
Called ‘yakiniku’ a Japanese word which translates to ‘grilled meat’, meat cakes are often found at restaurants. The restaurant will assemble a cake made out of raw meat in place of a sweet cake, for people to peel off the meat and cook it themselves at their table.
Often the cakes are decorated with flowers to make them more aesthetically pleasing, but that can’t hide the fact that it is quite literally a lump of raw meat.
