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Compendium
Jun 18, 2013

M-E-J-E-D




**Last Edited: 04/2018**

Welcome to the Food Manga Thread, where you can talk about your favorite series that center around creating, or eating food and drinking booze (usually of the Japanese variety although other cuisines have a chance to shine).

The art of people, fictional or not, going crazy over eating and drinking has been around for a while can be found in the form of dramas, movies, and celebrity shows from places such as Korea (who gave us muk-bang, where you watch the host eat a ton of food), Taiwan (ex. Eat Drink Man Woman), the good ol' USA (ex. Ratatouille and Chef), and of course, Japan. Japan, in particular, has quite the number of anime/manga series formed around the concept of creating, consuming and enjoying meals.

Some food stories may have a plot, some of them are simple and straightforward. Some series will show off cooking and provide recipes, some are just about characters sharing and contemplating their dishes and the human connections they form. This thread is for helping your fellow ADTRW goons to discover new delicious food manga to take a bite into. Haha!

:chef:What Do I Post??:chef:

Basically, talk about any anime/manga series that is about making and/or eating/drinking and maybe link people to newly updated chapters of said series. You can post food pic panels and anime gifs of food. If the food pic doesn't come from a series about cooking, what the heck, just post the picture and we'll drool like animals with you.

Food pics of actual food you have created is not required, but is always welcome and even encouraged! You may talk about food and booze in general, but try not to derail too much. If these 2D creations start inspiring you to try and turn on that dusty stove instead of ordering takeout, check out the Something Offal (the cooking subforum) to see what you can pick up and learn on your own time!

:chef: Go forth and feast your eyes and/or sit back and have a drink with food mangas. :cheers:



(Gifs from Shokugeki no Souma, Wakako-zake, and Silver Spoon. For more 2D food gifs you can go here: https://animefoodie.tumblr.com/)

Compendium Food Manga Favs posted:

Maiko-san Chi no Makanai-san (a very cute and relaxing manga about a young girl cooking for her friend and other maikos)

Shokugeki no Souma (warning: has people getting naked over food; also has its own thread so post there)

Wakako-zake (Pshuuuu)

Nomi Joshi (ladies go drinking and enjoying life, real good)

Silver Spoon (agriculture high school aka excuses to eat fresh farm goods brought to you by the creator of Fullmetal Alchemist)

Shinmai Shimai no Futari Gohan (stepsisters being cute and bonding over delicious food!!!)

Nobunaga no Chef (Modern Japanese chef somehow time travels to the Sengoku period, recruited by Oda Nobunaga, cooks to survive, it rocks)

Shinya Shokudou (nice slice of life about a diner that opens real late and hosts a colorful cast of characters)

Mister Ajikko (If Doogie Howser MD was a cook instead of a doctor, kinda not really)

There are other titles I've read of course, but those are the ones I personally recommend. Here are some Goon food series recommendations below.

Other Food Series Recommendations posted:

Misoshiru de Kanpai! (how many variations are there of miso soup good god - a boy's childhood friend cooks for him and educates us philistines on various miso soups)

Sweetness and Lightning (dad/cooking manga, very sweet)

Iron Wok Jan (very, very good and very, very hard to find physical copies of; women characters seem to evolve into Eldritch abominations as the series progresses)

Kinou Nani Tabeta? (or What Did You Eat Yesterday? Real life cooking tips from fictional people and v. relaxing)

Oishii Kankei (former rich girl learns to cook good, romance included)

Cooking Papa (about an office dad that cooks for his family, aka the translation project that no one will take on bc it will outlive them)

Dungeon Meshi (fantasy manga with dungeon crawling and making delicious meals out of monsters)

Cooking Master Boy/Chuuka Ichiban (Chinese cooking, set during the Qing Dynasty that gets intense as shounens do)

Toriko (JoJo's Bizarre Cooking Adventures; has its own thread and is mostly about punching people a lot before cooking and eating)

Koufuku Graffiti (cute girls eating delicious things)

Yakitate!! Japan (a crazy manga about crazy bakers trying to be the best at making bread, it gets weird)

Moyashimon (Silver Spoon: College Edition. More booze)

Ristorante Paradiso (SOL josei about a lady who ends up working at a restaurant in Rome. Romance w/ finely aged men, restaurant more
of a backdrop)

Isekai Izakaya "Nobu" (generic medieval/fantasy people have access to a modern Japanese ikazaya. Translations of the scans are somewhat rough, but slowly improving)

Compendium fucked around with this message at 02:30 on Apr 10, 2018

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Compendium
Jun 18, 2013

M-E-J-E-D
Food mangas tend to have a heavy focus on Japanese cuisine because duh. That said, here is a post quoted from hallo spacedog who has a full post and a topic on Japanese food if you're interested in exploring it or if you just need some clarification and context.

hallo spacedog posted:


For clarity's sake, none of these photos are mine, but as I post recipes and tutorials going forward, I'll post photos that belong to me.
Hello and welcome to a (new) thread about Japanese cookery! Please feel free to post questions or let me know if there's a point I haven't clarified enough. I can also take requests for tutorials/recipes if there's anything people are interested in.

Most people reading this thread have probably had the opportunity to eat Japanese food in some format, be it ramen, sushi, tonkatsu, curry, the list goes on. We’re at the point where you can get sushi at your local Kroger’s in the midwest now (although you may not want to). And if you live in an urban or semi-urban area, you’re probably aware of the rising popularity of good ramen outside of Japan.

Part One: About Japanese Food 和食について…

For the sake of simplification, I’m going to speak in broad strokes and generalizations. There will ALWAYS be exceptions but generally, the current Japanese diet tends to fall into a couple of big categories.


1: “traditional” Japanese food or washoku (和食). Obviously this is the largest category, under which your soups, rice dishes, fish dishes, vegetable dishes fall, broadly broken into categories like: grilled foods, braised foods, fried foods, “aemono,” and then even more specific categories like sushi/sashimi, kaiseki, hot pots (nabe), konamono (okonomiyaki, etc), donburi (rice bowls). I’m using quotations around traditional because there are things in this category of Portuguese and other origin that have long since been inducted into this category (like tempura, etc). Basically, if you picked up a book in Japan that said “Japanese cooking,” anything you might find in there would be in this category.


2: “Western food” or youshoku (洋食). Despite it’s name, this category really bears no more than a passing resemblance to food in the West. Primarily things which were developed in reaction to new eating patterns introduced during the Meiji period. This category will include cream stew, tongue stew, curry rice, dry curry, gratins, hayashi (hash) rice, tonkatsu, croquettes, hamburg steak, rolled cabbage, consomme, fried shrimp, etc. Similar to above, if you bought a book called “Western cooking,” in Japan, these are the things that would be in there.


3: “Chuuka” or Chinese (中華料理). Same rules as the above category. This category is so extensive that a lot of the dishes that would be considered a part of it are essentially Japanese nowadays. Ramen, adapted from Chinese noodles, are often considered the “national dish” of Japan, and gyoza are available in a large number of Japanese eateries abroad. Fried rice, chaashuu, kani-tama (crab omelette), shumai, chinjao rosu (pepper beef), mabo dofu, mabo nasu, harusame (bean threads), hiyashi chuuka (cold noodles,) chili shrimp, and all kinds of other popular dishes fall under this category.


4: Other “ethnic foods” (including Japanese-Korean, 韓国料理), “new” home cooking (新家庭料理), basically the stuff that doesn’t fit in anywhere. Okinawan food kinda goes here, and kinda goes in the Japanese category. Most of these items will be heavily adapted for a Japanese palate.

Despite the breakdown, most Japanese diets contain all of these categories and more, nowadays. As I said above, ramen is a massively popular every-day restaurant food for many people in Japan. Other exceptionally popular dishes, like beef bowl (gyudon, a bowl of rice topped with stewed thin slices of beef and onion in a sweet soy sauce/dashi broth) or curry rice, have not been in the Japanese cooking repertoire for so long, since beef consumption really only began in the Meiji Period. Because I feel the first category gets overlooked often, a lot of what I introduce to begin will probably belong there.


Part Two: The Basic Japanese Kitchen - Ingredients 材料


Okay, so to cook this food, you’re going to first of all need quite a few different ingredients. Unlike many world cuisines, Japanese food really doesn’t use any “spices” at all. Because of this, typical Japanese food is what a lot of people would call “bland.” Wait, don’t stop reading yet! I would say that rather than bland, you could call it subtle. It relies quite a bit on freshness of ingredients, because you don’t have a lot of thick spicy or sweet sauces to hide behind, and very little cooking oil is used compared to other cuisines. Instead the following items will determine the flavors for the most part.


The basic building blocks of Japanese food:

Dashi (出汁) - It is broth and the heart of Japanese cuisine. You can make this yourself or using shaved bonito (katsuobushi) and kombu, a type of very umami-filled seaweed, or you can use dashi powder. In the interest of time I’d encourage you to at least know how to do it yourself, but feel free to use dashi powder on a regular basis (I do, most Japanese nowadays do at home.) While in general dashi refers to bonito broth, there is kombu dashi made just from seaweed which can be a vegetarian substitute or is just called for on its own sometimes in Japanese cooking.
Sake (お酒) - Stop! Don’t buy that cooking sake on the grocery store shelf! (Okay, if you have no other options, by all means, buy it.) But if you have a decent liquor store nearby, about face and pick up a big bottle of Gekkeikan or something of at least semi-drinkable quality, and use that in your cooking. It’s actually maybe cheaper too if you just go to a good liquor store. And you can nip from the bottle while cooking, obviously...
Mirin (味醂・みりん) - There are two types of mirin: hon-mirin and aji-mirin. If you live where you can get hon-mirin, please use that, it’s naturally brewed and tastes much better than the sugar-sweetened version with lower alcohol that is called aji-mirin. It’s another type of rice wine. It is a completely distinct condiment from sake and sugar, and a very essential one that is in everything. For example, have you ever tried to make teriyaki and it was thin and lovely? You probably didn’t have any mirin in there.
Shoyu (醤油・しょうゆ) - Soy sauce, naturally brewed. In various varieties, the common ones koi-kuchi and usu-kuchi, sometimes called “dark” and “light.” Japanese soy sauce is fundamentally different tasting than Chinese soy sauce, so for best results, please invest in Kikkoman, Yamasa, etc. Having learned cooking in western Japan, I much prefer the taste and color of usu-kuchi and use it for almost everything. I prefer Yamasa brand.
Sugar (お砂糖) - Just white sugar, or you can use brown or raw sugar if you want, doesn’t really matter, or you could buy Japanese sugar if you really feel like it which supposedly melts at different temperatures or some other weird essentialist nonsense. I use white or brown, or whichever is less of a pain to take out of my cupboard at any given time.
Vinegar (お酢) - Rice wine vinegar specifically - this is also really important.
Miso (味噌) - There’s lots of varieties, red which is really salty, white which is less so and more sweet, awase which is a combination. I like to use red or a mixture, depending on how I feel, but only a really quality one. They sell some miso with the dashi broth pre-added, and personally I don’t like the way those taste. Maruman brand is the best I have found reasonably priced at my local Asian market.

There are other major ingredients that are used for cooking and flavoring:
Oil (油) - Vegetable/Canola/whatever - will be your primary cooking oil when called for, but you’ll find that a lot of Japanese food uses oil sparingly.
Oil - Sesame (ごま油) - certain dishes call for sesame oil, but no where near the frequency of Chinese or Korean. That said, it’s good to have on hand.
Kuzu starch (片栗粉) - you can also use cornstarch or what is called potato starch in Korean. A useful thickening agent that is commonly used to improve the texture of certain braised dishes. It will also often be used as a coating for frying.
Panko (パン粉) - breadcrumbs most common in youshoku/Western recipes like hamburg steak or tonkatsu.
Sesame seeds (ごま・胡麻) - toasted white seeds, sometimes black, but white is way more common. Often used ground up by mortar/pestle.
Ponzu (ポン酢) - yuzu/soy sauce/vinegar/sugar, useful for many applications, dressings, etc. Also comes in a sudachi (kind of like a lime) version but most common is yuzu.
Ichimi/Shichimi/Sansho - Powdered spices. Okay I said there were no spices but these are often used sparingly on a limited number of dishes as a flavoring. Ichimi and shichimi are 1 and 7 spice powders respectively, sansho is mountain pepper. I like sansho in miso soup.
Yuzukosho (ゆずこしょう・柚子胡椒) - a very popular recent yuzu + hot pepper condiment that comes from Kyushu. As it’s pretty regional I don’t use it much, but I know it’s popular abroad too recently. There’s a green one and a red one. I can’t really tell you much about this.
Karashi (からし・辛子) - A spicy Chinese style mustard. Comes in a paste. Most commonly a condiment for tonkatsu or buta-no-kakuni (braised pork bellies.)
Takanotsume (鷹の爪) - dried long hot pepper that is used very very sparingly in some Japanese food, like 1-2 pods minus the seeds for a big pot of food.
Wasabi (わさび・山葵) - Mostly sold pre-ground in tubes or the crappier stuff is in powder format. If you can get your hands on the real deal wasabi root, the taste is amazing but I’ve never actually seen one in the USA outside of premier sushi places in NYC/LA.
Curry Powder (カレー粉) - Curry powder, also sold more commonly in roux format in blocks.
Black pepper (こしょう・胡椒) - Regular black pepper. I have never seen white pepper in a Japanese recipe.
Mayonnaise (マヨ) - kewpie mayonnaise is the most common one, they come in a squeezy bottle and taste quite different from Hellmann’s etc, a little more tangy, vinegary, eggy. Yellow colored.


Rice obviously (お米・ご飯) - short grain, the backbone of all Japanese meals. It should be cooked with a decent amount of dryness so that each grain is distinct. If your rice is all kinda sticking together in a mash/slop/whatever, reduce the water, that’s super gross tasting. Every once in a while there are people who use a mixture of white rice with short-grain brown rice, or mixed grain rices, but white rice is by far the most popular thing eaten on a daily basis. The word for “cooked rice” (gohan) also means “meal”. If you want to cook Japanese a lot, it’s worth investing in an automatic rice cooker, esp the IH/Pressure/Fuzzy ones. My preferred brands of rice are Kagayaki/Hitomi.


Noodles (麺類):
Udon (うどん・饂飩) - big thick chewy flour noodles, serious business in western Japan like Shikoku. Sold frozen, vacuum-packed or dried. The dried ones are good to keep on hand. Frozen gets freezer burnt pretty easily. The ones in the vacuum packs don’t taste good.
Soba (そば・蕎麦) - buckwheat noodles. Delicious when hand-made. There are regular ones, and sometimes there are green tea flavored ones that are green.
Yakisoba noodles (焼きそば) - for yakisoba, which are a heavily Japanized version of something like chow mein, and really tasty. There’s a heavily processed dried ramen-style block version, and a nicer fresh ones sold in a bag in the fridge section.
Somen (そうめん・素麺) - thin white wheat noodles served cold in the summer. Pretty light tasting.
Ramen (ラーメン・らーめん) - instant and otherwise. Instant ramen is something people eat a lot at home but it’s really salty and kinda gross for the most part. With the proliferation of great ramen spots in Japan most Japanese don’t bother making home-made ramen at home, because it is a long process and doesn’t approach restaurant quality usually. Not saying it can’t but...
Harusame (春雨) - like those Korean mung bean threads, but less common in Japan. Something similar is also called Maroni-chan by it’s brand name.

Dried things:
Mushrooms (きのこ) - the most common are shiitake (椎茸). Keep a bag of those around, reconstitute them and use the liquid, etc.
Wakame (わかめ) - the common soft seaweed found in miso soups across America.
Hijiki (ひじき) - a dark black bud looking sort of sea vegetable that is really good has a surprisingly nutty/earthy flavor, worth trying out.
Nori (のり) - the flat dried seaweed sheets that most commonly are used to wrap sushi maki and temaki, these are also often cut up thinly and put on noodles, etc.
Kiriboshi Daikon (切り干し大根) - dried strips of daikon radish, used from time to time not as common.
Kampyo (干瓢) - dried seasoned strips of gourd.

Dried anchovies/fish in general are used in a lot of things:
Jako (雑魚): Tiny tiny little ones that are barely bigger than grains of rice are called jako and these are often cooked in food and eaten as is. If you cook them in a pan they have a nice toasty flavor. I like them over rice.
Niboshi (煮干): Middling size ones are bitter and usually just used to make soups and such.


Vegetables (野菜), you'll also hear these called Yama no Sachi (山の幸) meaning something like "The riches of the mountains":
Japanese use a lot of vegetables. I would estimate I cook about 20% or less meat products with the rest of my food being vegetables and rice.
Common vegetables you will be using in Japanese food are the following:

“White” cabbage (キャベツ), Nappa (白菜) called “hakusai”, Yellow Onions (玉ねぎ), Green onions/Scallions (ねぎ・葱), “Long/Tokyo” onions (長ネギ) It’s like a really long scallion. You can sub leeks or scallions if need be, Chinese/Garlic Chive (にら), Ginger (しょうが・生姜), Garlic (にんにく) not commonly used in Cat. 1, overly flavorful for Japanese food. Used in Chinese stuff and Korean stuff, Burdock (ごぼう・牛蒡), Potatoes (お芋), White fleshed sweet potatoes (さつま芋), Taro root (里芋), Kabocha squash (かぼちゃ), Carrots (にんじん・人参) - big thick reddish ones preferrably, Cucumbers (きゅうり・胡瓜), Eggplant (おなす・お茄子), Daikon (大根), Renkon (れんこん・蓮根), Naga-imo/yama-imo (長芋・山芋), Shiso leaf (しそ・大葉), Spinach (ほうれん草), Green bean (いんげん), Snow peas/pea pods (えんどう), Fava beans (そら豆), Soy beans, edamame and other varied beans (大豆・枝豆), Chrysanthemum greens (菊菜), Mizuna (水菜), Komatsuna (小松菜), Mustard green (高菜), Thin green pepper (ピーマン), shishito pepper(ししとう), Turnips (株), Mushrooms - enoki, shiitake, eringi, matsutake, among others, Bitter melon (苦瓜) - Okinawan regional, Tomato (トマト), Lettuce (レタス), Fruits (果物・果実) - including yuzu (citron), lemon, sudachi (vaguely like a lime), asian pear, apple, oranges and other various specific citrus, peach, grapes, melon, persimmon, etc., Ginko seed (銀杏) - you see it in egg custard., yurine (lily bulb, I think? ゆりね), chestnut (栗).


Fish/Shellfish and assorted seafood (魚・貝類) - obviously... you'll also hear these called Umi no Sachi (海の幸) meaning something like "The riches of the ocean":
If it crawled out of the ocean or swam inside of it, there’s probably a recipe for it. There is literally no limit to this, as many people know because of the dolphin/whale controversies. The only thing that pops into mind that Japanese don’t eat from the sea (that I know of and could be totally wrong maybe) are seals/sea lions, etc. Fish really is the center of truly Japanese cuisine and I would encourage people to learn at least how to salt a salmon etc. Because it is easy.


Meat (肉)
Chicken, then pork, then beef, with more pork the further south you go.
You see a lot more dark meat chicken than white meat, and a lot of the white meat probably goes into ground chicken which is traditionally commonly used. Japanese people don’t prefer lean meats, so seeing just a chicken breast is pretty uncommon.
Pork: ground pork, pork bellies, for fried pork cutlet the loin, thinly sliced pieces for ginger pork/pork shabu, etc.
Beef: wasn’t really eaten in Japan until Meiji, you get a lot of the thinly sliced roast, also the “navel cut” which is the fatty part analogous to pork bellies, stew chunks, ground beef, and such and now you see it as yakiniku which is Japanese style korean bbq, etc. You also get a lot of beef offal as yakiniku, called “horumon.”

Lamb, goat, rabbit, and veal are really not eaten or widely available. Lamb is sometimes present in foreign restaurants but you really won’t see the others hardly ever, and older Japanese seem specifically opposed to both rabbit and veal. Wild boar is eaten in rural/more mountainous regions but is just used like a gamier pork. There’s also pork/boar hybrid, called イノブタ (ino-buta).




Tofu and Eggs are super common proteins. Japanese use eggs constantly in all kinds of formats. Tofu also comes in a lot of forms, including soft (絹ごし), firm (木綿), atsuage (厚揚げ, thick fried tofu), abura-age (油揚げ、お揚げさん, thin sheet of fried tofu), yuba (湯葉, sheets skimmed from soy milk), okara (おから, the lees left from when tofu is made and pressed, hard to find in the USA as it usually goes for hog feed,) among others that I am probably forgetting.


There’s also a substance called konnyaku/konjac (蒟蒻) that is made from a type of root or potato like substance called “devil’s tongue”. It is largely flavorless and without calories, and comes in block, noodle-like, and bowtied format. It also absorbs broth flavors and has a nice texture.
There are lots of other ingredients but these are the primary ones that I can think of.

Thanks to Electricmonk500 for pointing out that I forgot two essential fermented staples of Japanese cuisine: Umeboshi and Nattou


Umeboshi(梅干し) - I would consider these to be one of those acquired tasted items that a lot of Westerners may not start out liking. I personally did not. These pickled plums are salty, sweet and sour all at the same time. They are pickled in copious amounts of salt, and are usually eaten with rice as a pickled side. You'll find them in many different regional varieties, but personally, I like the ones with shiso leaf, while a lot of people new to these may like the hachimitsu (honey) ones because they are sweeter.


Nattou(納豆) - This is a dish made out of fermented soybeans. It has a very strongly acidic/ammonia type of smell and there are many Japanese, (my mother in law included) who do not like to eat these. Adding on to the strong taste and smell is a sticky texture similar to the yama-imo I mentioned or something like the stickyness of okra. This is much, much more popular in Kantou (the Tokyo area, Eastern Japan) than it is in Kansai (the Osaka/Kyoto/Kobe/Nara area, Western Japan). It's often eaten for breakfast, and some people like adding in an egg yolk, spicy mustard, or chopped scallions.

Part Three: Resources

English Language:
http://justhungry.com/ and sister site http://justbento.com/, one of the premier places for excellent Japanese recipes and tips by Makiko Itoh, who is great.
http://www.japanesefoodreport.com/ which doesn’t seem to be updating recently, but has a lot of good stuff in it.
http://www.justonecookbook.com/ another solid site run by Namiko Chen

Japanese Language:
http://sirogohan.com/ my favorite cooking site in Japanese. The stuff this guy makes is generally amazing and is really based around rices, pickles, vegetable dishes and good simple solid stuff like that. Everyday, awesome cooking.
http://cookpad.com/ the premier Japanese user submitted recipe site. Like any crowdsourced site some of the recipes are poo poo, but you get a sense of what Japanese eat every day from this. Some of the features are registration/pay only, unfortunately. There is a somewhat incomplete English version of the site here: https://en.cookpad.com/

Random Stuff:
http://washokufood.blogspot.com/2008/04/umi-no-sachi.html Sort of an interesting albeit broken English article regarding Food and the Shinto Religion.

Compendium fucked around with this message at 06:37 on May 16, 2016

Yes_Cantaloupe
Feb 28, 2005
Sweetness and Lightning! The intersection of single dad manga and cooking manga. It's really good and sweet. The manga's on CR and it's getting an anime this summer!

Compendium
Jun 18, 2013

M-E-J-E-D
I remember reading that, I'll add that in the morning. It really is cute and the art is nice :)

ZepiaEltnamOberon
Oct 25, 2010

I Failed At Anime 2022
Iron Wok Jan.

Iron Wok Jan.

Iron Wok Jan.

Iron Wok Jan is literally the best cooking manga ever and nothing that has or will be created will ever live up to the exploits of Akiyama Jan.

ZepiaEltnamOberon
Oct 25, 2010

I Failed At Anime 2022
The fact that Iron Wok Jan is so difficult to get your hands on is mankind's greatest sin.

I could only find volumes 6 and 25 in two different stores, and volume 6 was in the discount bin.

I tried asking the dudes at the shop to order the last two volumes for me, but they either didn't or couldn't.

Probably cause the company that brought it over is no longer around.

Luckily I had access to Korean scans.

Thirty-Five Minutes
Aug 12, 2007
not a republic serial villain
Oh wow, someone started this thread! Okay, manga recommendations:

Kinou Nani Tabeta? A lawyer cooking food for his hairdresser lover. It has real life cooking tips! Earlier chapters available online, and Vertical's putting out a good English translation. This manga is very relaxing to read.
Oishii Kankei: An earlier series by the mangaka of Real Clothes, about a formerly rich girl who starts working in a restaurant after her father dies. There's plot-relevant romance, but actually cooking food remains a key point of the manga.
Cooking Papa: This will never be fully translated. Ever. An old-school series about a salaryman who cooks for his family.
Dungeon Meshi: A fantasy manga where a party of adventurers travel through dangerous dungeons and eat the monsters they encounter. Contains cooking tips, if you can obtain the ingredients.

Anime recommendations:

Cooking Master Boy/Chuuka Ichiban: A shounen anime about Chinese cooking, set during the Qing Dynasty. Do you like cooking tournaments? Do you like ridiculous reactions to food? Do you like cliffhangers about the secret of a particular dish and themed cooking competitions and battles for the future of food in all of China? Watch Cooking Master Boy!

Huzzah!
Sep 15, 2007

Malnutrition is scarier than any beastie.
Can't have a food thread without mentioning Toriko. Shounen meets Cooking. Basically, big burly mens beat up monsters/other burly men and tiny guy cooks the monsters. Sadly, the later end of the series so far has gotten pretty far away from the cooking portion and is mostly fighting. That's fine, but I do miss the cooking of strange ingredients.

Knorth
Aug 19, 2014

Buglord
If we're including anime, then there's Koufuku Graffiti too

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZgZ_mXwaW4

Cute little show about some friends cooking and eating together, with some very Shaft intensity

ZepiaEltnamOberon
Oct 25, 2010

I Failed At Anime 2022

Knorth posted:

If we're including anime, then there's Koufuku Graffiti too

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZgZ_mXwaW4

Cute little show about some friends cooking and eating together, with some very Shaft intensity

It was originally a manga so it counts too.

It was also very good.

Gale Raziya
Jun 18, 2014

Good thread!

ZepiaEltnamOberon
Oct 25, 2010

I Failed At Anime 2022
Anyways this is a really good thread cause I went on a binge reread of Iron Wok Jan last week and wanted a thread to talk about how good it was to a bunch of people who are unlikely to understand anything I am talking about.

Thank you OP.

Linnaeus
Jan 2, 2013

Yakitate!! Japan

Davincie
Jul 7, 2008

shinya shokudo is a seinen series about a man who operates an all night food place and mostly focuses on him helping out his customers. the translations aren't complete so there's a live action drama if that's your sort of thing

moyashimon is silver spoon: college edition although there's more of a focus on alcohol, the making thereof and various drunk college antics the cast do consume a variety of let's say well preserved food

ristorante paradiso is a josei SOL about a girl who runs away from life and ends up working in a restaurant in rome. there's food, there's romance and there's a bunch of middle aged men as eligible bachelors. the restaurant is more of a backdrop than the focus though

Davincie
Jul 7, 2008

also i just want to note again that the concept is far from unique to japan, there's a bunch of korean shows that come down to showcasing the local cuisine by making the cast going absolutely insane, see several episodes of running man, surpluss princess. hong kong cinema too, with god of cookery being a riff on a largely untranslated genre of people going mad over food

ZepiaEltnamOberon
Oct 25, 2010

I Failed At Anime 2022
2015 was the year of cooking + mukbang (eating) in Korea. Also singing and raising kids, but that's besides the point.

A lot of chefs became celebrities and have branched out onto other cooking shows. One dude even got two television shows with his name on it.

Compendium
Jun 18, 2013

M-E-J-E-D
Thanks everyone! I'll make sure to add people's recommendations and correct the OP post accordingly. I'll add some more posting options too (like letting people post food pic panels and gifs from their favorite show or whatever).

everythingWasBees
Jan 9, 2013




Isekai Izakaya "Nobu"

It's set in your standard medieval-ish fantasy world or what have you. A bar opens serving cold(!) beer and unheard of food from a far off land in the east. The first few versions of the first few chapters are really rough, as the TL can barely speak English, but he now has a decent proofreader and the quality of all of them is pretty great. Newest versions are all on Batoto, beware if your favorite aggregate gathered the earlier versions, I guess.

Compendium
Jun 18, 2013

M-E-J-E-D
Improved the OP and the recommendation lists. :cheers:

boom boom boom
Jun 28, 2012

by Shine
You gotta include What Did You Eat Yesterday, bro. middle-aged gay couple makes delicious home-cooked meals, and the recipe is included so you can make it yourself

Compendium
Jun 18, 2013

M-E-J-E-D
I did bruh, right there in the OP (both Japanese and English title included)

I should probably include Bartender, I still can't believe that series is still around.

gimme the GOD DAMN candy
Jul 1, 2007
bartender is real bad, though

Compendium
Jun 18, 2013

M-E-J-E-D
Thank you for your contribution

I mean, at least it's readable compared to Bambino Secondo

ZepiaEltnamOberon
Oct 25, 2010

I Failed At Anime 2022
I should probably write up a different description for Iron Wok Jan once I figure it out.

I really think it did food battles really well. Not just "this guy made better food than yours" but actual tactics. Like, in the first tournament arc, Jan figured out his opponent was making a heavy and oily dish, so he deliberately made a sweet soup and served it before his opponent. The judges were already full after judging dishes the whole day, so once they drank Jan's soup they couldn't handle his opponent's dish, which had also grown cold in the meantime.

It was really overexaggerated.

I'd place it somewhere between Souma and Yakitatte! in terms of outlandishness. It didn't go full on supernatural like Yakitatte! did but it was sure as hell loving bizarre.

Like kicking sharks out of shark tanks. Killing ostriches with clapping cymbal monkey toys. Crossdressing to challenge the chef of a hotel by making edible brain molds out of lotus flowers. Flamethrowers on hands.

Y'know, normal stuff.

Compendium
Jun 18, 2013

M-E-J-E-D
You've convinced me to go seek out Iron Wok Jan in earnest with the shark tank

ZepiaEltnamOberon
Oct 25, 2010

I Failed At Anime 2022

Compendium posted:

You've convinced me to go seek out Iron Wok Jan in earnest with the shark tank

If you can't find English scans or Japanese raws, here are the Korean scans.

http://www.yuncomics.com/archives/890590

The resolution is poo poo, though, so you'll hafta zoom in.

Compendium
Jun 18, 2013

M-E-J-E-D
I would ask about why the girls' proportions are super ridiculous, but then again I read Shokugeki no Souma

but still why

ZepiaEltnamOberon
Oct 25, 2010

I Failed At Anime 2022

Compendium posted:

I would ask about why the girls' proportions are super ridiculous, but then again I read Shokugeki no Souma

but still why

Yeah I dunno why, it was normal in the beginning but then they suddenly ballooned up.

Look at this.



It's even worse in the sequel.

I'm just assuming everything gets exaggerated, and breasts were no exception.

Everything Burrito
Jun 2, 2011

I Failed At Anime 2022
Another plus to What Did You Eat Yesterday? is that volume 10 just came out in English last week, unlike so many others that have barely any chapters to read. That's also going to be the best way to read it since as far as I know scans only go through volume 3.

Linnaeus
Jan 2, 2013

ZepiaEltnamOberon posted:

Yeah I dunno why, it was normal in the beginning but then they suddenly ballooned up.

Look at this.



It's even worse in the sequel.

I'm just assuming everything gets exaggerated, and breasts were no exception.

:roflolmao:

gimme the GOD DAMN candy
Jul 1, 2007

ZepiaEltnamOberon posted:

Yeah I dunno why, it was normal in the beginning but then they suddenly ballooned up.

Look at this.



It's even worse in the sequel.

I'm just assuming everything gets exaggerated, and breasts were no exception.

shokugeki no souma has porn art, because the mangaka used to do porn. those are unholy abominations, so maybe the mangaka did some horror manga?

ZepiaEltnamOberon
Oct 25, 2010

I Failed At Anime 2022

Serious Frolicking posted:

shokugeki no souma has porn art, because the mangaka used to do porn. those are unholy abominations, so maybe the mangaka did some horror manga?

Well....



Tetsuhai no Jan! is the author's latest work, and it's apparently Jan if he was a gambler instead of a chef.

Breasts are still large, judging from this image.

Compendium
Jun 18, 2013

M-E-J-E-D
I'm catching up with Sweetness and Lightning right now, gosh I feel happy and fuzzy inside :3: The food art isn't the most impressive, but I still get the sense of deliciousness coming off the page since it's normal people making and struggling with cooking, not professional schmoes.



pictured here, real fear towards a hot frying pan



yum

Archenteron
Nov 3, 2006

:marc:

ZepiaEltnamOberon posted:

Yeah I dunno why, it was normal in the beginning but then they suddenly ballooned up.

Look at this.



It's even worse in the sequel.

I'm just assuming everything gets exaggerated, and breasts were no exception.

Why is Seras Victoria making cameos in a cooking manga, she doesn't eat food.

kidcoelacanth
Sep 23, 2009

Didn't use Toons with Spoons for the thread title, smdh

Davincie
Jul 7, 2008

Compendium posted:

I would ask about why the girls' proportions are super ridiculous, but then again I read Shokugeki no Souma

but still why

hey now, the shokugeki proportions are perfect

ZepiaEltnamOberon
Oct 25, 2010

I Failed At Anime 2022

Yes_Cantaloupe posted:

Sweetness and Lightning! The intersection of single dad manga and cooking manga. It's really good and sweet. The manga's on CR and it's getting an anime this summer!

Holy poo poo this is really good and cute and sweet.

I remember reading the first chapter a while back and not following up on it.

So good.

EDIT: Chapter 10 steamrolled me and tossed my heart into a grinder.

ZepiaEltnamOberon fucked around with this message at 15:39 on May 17, 2016

Compendium
Jun 18, 2013

M-E-J-E-D

kidcoelacanth posted:

Didn't use Toons with Spoons for the thread title, smdh

I thought about it at first, but then I didn't really care for it

Pewdiepie
Oct 31, 2010

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Futaba Anzu
May 6, 2011

GROSS BOY

i love food and i also love food manga!

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