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!
