Williamsburg’s Fancy Fast Food

She wants Nobu but your budget says Popeye’s. The simple solution: Popeye’s sushi.

That’s just what’s pictured in this photo from fancyfastfood.com, a brilliant new Tumblr blog—and today’s Twitter sensation—that deconstructs fast food items and recreates them as artfully styled gourmet-looking meals.

This maki roll and sashimi plate was actually made from Popeye’s items: a two-piece Bonafide spicy fried chicken dinner, a Loaded Chicken Wrap, a large order of red beans and rice, and Popeye’s Lousiana Hot Sauce. “The blog started out as a goof, but then I got really into it,” the author tells Brokelyn. “Now each dish takes about two to three hours to think out and prepare.” See the before picture, and the mad genius behind the blog, after the jump.

At left, the ingredients before their transformation.

Each post on fancyfastfood.com details exactly how to shred chicken strips (for sushi), pulse French fries in a food processor (for steak and mashed potatoes) and so on. Other recipes: the Tapas de Castillo Blanco (White Castle) and the Tacobellini (Burrito Supreme). But be warned, these are not 30-minute meals. The instructions, each step linked to a photo on Flickr, are as complicated as anything in Gourmet Magazine.

So who’s the twisted foodie behind this thing? It doesn’t list an author, but we tracked it down to a 34-year-old guy from Williamsburg named Erik R. Trinidad (below) a ridiculously talented travel writer and digital animator who should be working for Martha Stewart. Or Brokelyn. (Holla Erik! Have you ever tried Nathan’s foie gras?)

The obvious question: Does he eat the stuff? “The Tacobellini was pretty good,” he told us. “The thing is, the food sits under photographic lighting for so long that most of the items dry out by the time I get to eat them.”

Trinidad says he’s been styling food since childhood. “My brother and I used to play ‘Iron Chef Buffet’ at those Chinese food buffets, where we’d choose a category like chicken or soup and go out to the hot plates and try to outdo each other with the fanciest food styling of a dish,” he said.

He adds that he and his last girlfriend parted ways due to his “overuse of green garnish.” “We jokingly say we broke up because I wrongly put dried chives on her mac and cheese,” he said.

“As of late, whenever I make food for myself or friends, I’m all about the presentation of it,” he said, pointing us to a recent lunch of tuna salad on a tomato with a slice of dill from his Flickr pool. (And no, this one didn’t start out as a Filet-o-Fish.)

Watch out, Wylie Dufresne.