Why does anime food always look so yummy? There you are, innocently sitting down to a few episodes after a long day at work and before you know it your drooling on your couch and wondering who will deliver okonomiyaki… I really love Okonomiyaki. There’s a tiny little restaurant that makes awesome ones in Montreal but they don’t deliver here.
Ok super, I’m already hungry now and I’m about to get way way hungrier. These are five shows that had me wishing I could magically get invited to dinner in an anime:
5. Dream Festival R!
Super weird choice, I know! I even agree but hear me out on this one. Dream Festival R is the second season of a fluffy idol anime show or more precisely mobile game extended commercial. It has no particular reason to feature food at all and the first season didn’t have any memorable dishes. Although there was a running gag with one of the characters serving not quite edible food, the food was always illustrated in a very mundane way.
So going into the second season, I had zero reason to be anticipating mouth watering images and then bam! Well you see the screencaps above! This isn’t a show with a lot of food but the few depictions look so delicious and are so unexpected that I couldn’t help but add it to the list. This show honestly made me see if I could post mates some ramen.
4. Yuru Camp
Unfortunately I don’t have many Yuru Camp screencaps as my viewing of this show dates back to the dark days where I wasn’t taking my own. Still I quite clearly remember just how much food there was in the series. It was almost surreal how often scenes somewhat arbitrarily ended up revolving around cooking and eating.
I’m not a big fan of camping food and I’ve been a vegetarian for years so this is not exactly the type of foods that usually get my tummy growling but just from the sheer amount of food on the screen I think it earned a spot.
3. Kakuriyo: Bed and Breakfast for Spirits
Food was a staple in this series and was often equated with love or caring as such the dishes were always shown with a certain amount of reverence. There certainly were a lot of them and enough variety to have a little something for everyone.
Although most of the recipes seemed down to earth, the fantastic setting makes me think they had access to ingredients which I wouldn’t be able to find in my local grocery store so that knocked it down a few pegs.
2. Isekai Izakaya
Not only did this show feature the most delicious looking Izakaya food AND tell me which alcohol to pair it with – a show after my own heart I tell you – but it also had honest to goodness real life cooking segments to teach how to prepare some of those dishes at home.
I spent a lot of time trying to convert to meals shown on Isekai Izakaya to local vegetarian ingredients, to mixed results. Still this show so perfectly conveyed the unique joy of eating a late night perfectly cooked piece of comfort food after some partying at a local pub. If you know what I mean.
Honorable mention
Food wars
There is absolutely no reason that Food Wars shouldn’t be on the list proper other than the fact that it just seems too obvious a choice… An anime that launched the love of cooking in fans all over the world!
1. Rokuhōdō Yotsuiro Biyori
All of my choices featured a lot of absolutely delicious looking dishes that are sure to tease anyone’s appetite but when in comes right down to it, Yotsuiro Biyori took the top spot as a matter of personal taste. The food featured throughout the show didn’t just look super tasty, it also had a lot of dishes I would order with minimum substitutions.
I adore macha desserts and I still dream of the macha chiffon cake in that series. Chiffon cake is a pain to make and I am the only person I know who likes macha so I can’t muster up the motivation to make it for myself. Instead, I have my screencaps to drool over.
There you go, are you hungry now? Have you tried any of these foods? Do you have an anime that always leaves you wanting to grab a bite?
Also, although chiffon cake is a bit of a hassle, millecrepe is actually kind of fun to put together. I recently tried this Just One Cookbook macha millecrepe version and it was delectable!
I really feel hungry now, specially when i saw Niku.🥩😋
I know how you feel. Except for the meat part…
Meat is my favourite food 🥰😋
I admit I opened this post up, then left it until dinnertime…(LOL.)
I’m not much of a cook – COVID and a new rice cooker which is advertised as being able to make cake (!!!) means my dad has been bugging me to cook something, but at most, I can only make pasta or rice with side dishes. Nonetheless, Rokuhoudou is one of my favourite anime because of the good food, good comfiness and good boys. (I even made the jump to the manga because there’s not much of a plot – the first and latest 3 chapters are available online via Comic Bunch.)
…now that I research, there seems to be a prequel to Rokuhoudou called “Kanbi Danshi” and, before that, “Kanbi Danshi Sabou”, but from the looks of things, they’re all about the same cast and restaurant.
YuruCamp is also good for food moments.
You’re going to try some jiggly rice cooker cheesecake? You can definitely do that but in my experience, it’s not easier than using the oven. If you do, let us know how it turns out.
You can make cheesecake with a rice cooker…? Other people have just made sponge cakes that taste like egg with it, so this is news to me. (The reason I’m not much of a cook is because I tried making baklava – this Greek pastry thing – one time and it ended up cold and funny-tasting because I didn’t have oranges and put in kumquats instead, so I’m definitely no Tsubaki.)
Being more of Russian heritage I never use citrus in my Baklava. It’s also a really common sweet that I learned to make as a kid and it hadn’t occurred to me to try with orange. I know the Turkish variations use rose water but I’m not a fan of that. I’m sure your next one will be great.
Yuru Camp belongs on the list just because Nadeshiko makes even the most pedestrian food look like the most delicious thing in the world.
“I burned the inside of my mouth!”
“Why does she seem happy about that?”
I think one of my personal “feel good” things in anime are scenes of people sharing food with each other. Not in terms of sitting down for dinner together, but actual sharing of portions, like when friends at school start sampling each other’s bentos, or Mugi being eager to offer some of her french fries to the other girls in K-On. I’ve heard that sharing your food with a group in Japanese culture is a way of showing you feel a bond with them, so lots of potential for WAFF in those scenes.
There’s no real tradition in Quebec of sharing food like that. I really miss it. It’s very common n most countries I’ve lived and I always enjoyed it a lot
I really not to stop reading posts like these just before I head off to sleep. I always get the urge to go into the kitchen and grab some food 😅😅😂😂
I feel you
One of the worst choices I’ve ever done was watch Food Wars on toonami. Being up late and watching them make good food. Was not the best of choices.
I can imagine. Writing this post was already a pretty dubious choice
Outside of wanting to visiting like the Gundam and Square Enix cafes in Japan.
I really wanna eat the kind of food that’s shown on those really tasty images. (As long as it isn’t seafood since i really have bad allergies to it and the smell of it causes me to feel nauseous.)
-K.Anthony
Oh no, Japan is gonna be rough for you. Lost of seafood….
I’m pretty interested in the ramen,kobe beef and the bacon pancakes they have there.
Starting more mochi in places like No Frills and Loblaws now lately.
Miss Koizumi Loves Ramen Noodles made me want to take a trip to Japan, just to visit all the best ramen shops!
Oh yum, I’m a little hungry just thinking about it
Ooh, Yotsuiro Biyori would have been my first choice, too, except rather then order take out I want to go there. Such a relaxing atmosphere. I’d definitely try a maccha chiffon cake; I’m curious.
I would love to go as well, but if I can’t, I’ll accept the cake
I’m watching the Fate spinoff Today’s Menu for the Emiya Family and it’s just this kind of show, all about cooking and having dinner with friends. Even people who never read or watched Fate or know who any of the characters are, the food probably looks great.
I haven’t watched it yet but it does look that way
All those foods are some Yummy! Problem is.. now all take out food I can order here is going to be way sub par to that!
Also kinda scary we both had a post a food today..it happens fairly often that within one or to three days we have overlapping topics! Please know I am not stalking you schedule pile :O
Sorryyy… I actually happens to me all the time with all sorts of bloggers. I will decide to review a random series no one has talked about for years (I schedule my posts in advance) and like the week before it publishes, 3 different bloggers have reviews out. I think we’re all low grade psychically related
I think you might be right! You actually made me cook today! So yay for you here!