Japanese Chef Wows Twitter With Daikon Radish Chain

A Japanese chef wowed Twitter this week when he posted a photo of a single large daikon radish carved into a chain of radish links, casually appearing to defy all logic.

A Twitter user going by Zoe_Aishiteru posted a photo of the radish chain, and said the head chef had cut the radish into a chain because he had some spare time on his hands.

"The head chef gave me this daikon he cut up for fun because he was bored lol," Zoe_Aishiteru wrote.

Twitter users were shocked and wondered whether the chef had maybe just carved rings out of the daikon and somehow linked them together so subtly that the connections couldn't be seen. But, no — he really did carve it all in one piece out of one large daikon, Rocket News 24 reported.

It turns out it's a pretty old technique, too. Three years ago, Rocket News 24 found instructions for a daikon chain in an eighteenth century cookbook called The Complete Box of 100 Secrets for Preparing Daikon Radish. It's called a wachigai, or "linked ring daikon." Though it looks like magic, it's actually just some really good knife skills at work.