A Foodie’s Guide to Anime
Feed your body and soul with these shows!
One of my favorite activities to do is to watch anime while eating. It touches the senses of sight, hearing, and taste. From the sizzling sounds of cooking to the visuals of the food itself, food anime brings that multi-faceted simultaneous stimulation to a level of euphoria.
Food in anime is historically visually beautiful but also plays a big role in showcasing a character’s relationship with food and their home life. It is difficult to find an anime that doesn’t have a character eating at least once no matter the genre.
I personally am terrible at cooking (I can bake anything,though!), but being a foodie and super taster, I couldn’t help but falling in love with food anime. Understandably, it can be difficult to know where to begin your food anime journey. So this is your guide to food anime to watch!
sweetness and lightning
This anime follows a father and daughter’s journey of transitioning from takeout to cooking home cooked meals after the passing of a wife and mother. The daughter is an enthusiastic eater and her father’s strives for better eating is admirable. The show is heartwarming, teaches one how to cook, and shows how a community can form through food.
Ristorante Paradiso
This mature flavored anime drama centers around a restaurant staff in a high-class restaurant in Rome. I say mature as the happenings that go on are in adult context: divorce, parenthood, infidelity, and navigating adult relationships and family but doneso in a graceful style. The anime follows Nicoletta, who was raised by her grandmother after her mother left to remarry, and what happens after she travels to Rome to see her mother once again. Her mother happens to be married to a gentleman owns a restaurant in which all of the servers wear glasses. The show is one that pairs well with a glass of wine. Maybe a Barbera d’Alba, perhaps.
Today’s Menu for the Emiya Family
This show is probably the best anime for step-by-step instructional cooking tutorials. Alongside that, you get to see the Fate characters in a casual manner. The show takes its time in teaching you how to cook and is very thorough in everything to keep mind to create each dish even the shopping process. It also has some of the most beautiful visuals of dishes. It is very lighthearted and informative. I’m terrible at cooking but this anime motivated me to cook!
Ms. Koizumi Loves Ramen Noodles
If I could eat ramen everyday, I absolutely would. Ms. Koizumi Loves Ramen Noodles makes that coulda woulda a reality! This anime follows a girl and her incredibly intense passion for ramen as she slurps one bowl after another. It’s informative as she dictates every reason why the particular bowl of ramen onscreen is so delicious, it’s origin story, and providing information on all of the different kinds of ramen that exists. She acknowledges the differences in others’ palates and only encourages others to join in on her delicious journey by thoroughly enjoying her own experiences. Slurp this one right up!
Food Wars! Shokugeki no Soma
This might just be the most perfect food anime available. It is the perfect marriage of shonen and food anime. The dishes are astoundingly gorgeous and the stakes are high when a food battle gets thrown down. The show follows Yukihira Soma, a middle school student determined to surpass his dad’s superior cooking skills who is suddenly forced to enroll in an elite culinary school. There he finds competition who are masters of their specific style of cooking and grows as a chef with every food battle. The show not only shows off perfect dishes but also explains exactly how every single part of the dish affects a person and why that reaction is forced out. It’s a fun and exquisite time so give it a shot but maybe do so while also eating or else you’re going to be hungry.
*stomach growls* now I'm starving so I'm gonna go eat some tonkotsu ramen. Bon appetit!
This article is subject to updates.
What's your favorite dish? What's your favorite food anime? Let us know in the comments below!
Ricky Soberano is a Features Editor, Script Writer, and Editorial Programming Coordinator for Crunchyroll. She’s the former Managing Editor of Brooklyn Magazine. You can follow her on Twitter @ramenslayricky.
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