All that delicious food in anime has a master chef behind it, like Soma in Food Wars! and Brock in Pokemon. But who is the best anime chef of all?
Many anime fans have recently been buzzing over rumors of an upcoming anime adaptation of Delicious in Dungeon, a manga whose characters descend into a dungeon to find increasingly rare monsters to slay and cook. As viewers wait to see whether there really will be a new cooking anime to fill the void Food Wars! left when it ended in 2020, their hunger can be sated by looking back at some of the greatest anime chefs.
Whether they are professional chefs, like Soma Yukihira in Food Wars!, or simply extremely accomplished casual cooks, like Brock in Pokemon, their food is delicious enough to delight even the pickiest eaters.
Every Hunter, by definition, must always be searching for something, be it precious jewels, historical artifacts, or even people. Menchi is a Gourmet Hunter, who dedicates her life to finding the rarest and most exquisite ingredients in the world, to the point of risking life and limb just for one perfect taste.
In the episode "A x Surprising x Challenge," as examiners of the Hunter Exam, Menchi and her partner, Buhara, order the entrants to do what they do: risk falling to their deaths to retrieve a rare egg and then cook it to her satisfaction. Though she is not seen cooking herself onscreen, her qualifications speak for themselves.
In addition to being a powerful Exorcist with one of the best swords in anime, Rin Okumura is a phenomenal cook. He was taught by his adoptive father as a child, and while he may slack off in other areas, he takes cooking 100 percent seriously. Every step of each recipe is completed on a technically perfect level.
However, Rin's cooking is only something he enjoys doing in his downtime. Exorcism is his full-time career, and unlike the rest of Rin, there is nothing super-powered or supernatural about his food. But it delights his friends when he shares it with them, and that's more than enough for him.
Though Brock wound up as the team cook of the main trio mostly because he's the only one of them who knows how to cook, that doesn't diminish his talents in the slightest. He got a crash course in the culinary arts by cooking meals for his nine younger siblings when their parents left them.
A standout example of his skills is in the episode "Leave It to Brocko!" when, as part of his efforts to retrieve stolen Pokémon from Team Rocket, he cooks the villains a meal to distract them. All three find it so tasty that they don't notice when Brock successfully rescues Nuzleaf and Bonsly. In addition to human food, Brock can also make top-tier Pokémon food.
Unlike other countries, Japan doesn't have a signature type of bread, and this is something that prodigious baker Kazuma simply cannot accept. He dedicates his entire career to creating a bread perfect and unique enough to represent his entire nation on the world stage, in one of the best food-related anime.
With the passion of any shounen fighter, Kazuma battles his way through several global baking tournaments and never gives up on his goal of the perfect creation. His various bread recipes have the power to physically transform people, turn back time and alter the future, and even send its eaters straight to Heaven.
While Sebastian and Claude are technically perfect chefs, their impeccable skills come from the demonic natures that allow them to do everything perfectly. For a chef with talent, a lifetime of training, and an intense love of the food he cooks, look no further than Agni, who is nicknamed "the Hand of God" for the way his touch can make a meal perfect.
In the episode "His Butler, Supremely Talented," he and Sebastian have a cooking duel in which the contestants must try to make the perfect curry. Agni proves a formidable opponent even for a millennia-old demon, with the audience at the curry festival amazed by his skill.
A member of the Zero Squad, Hikifune's culinary skill is unmatched, making her both a helpful ally, fearsome enemy, and one of the characters Bleach fans can expect in the Thousand-Year Blood War movie. The food she cooks can massively increase a soul's physical and spiritual power, and Ichigo and Renji declare it the best they've ever eaten.
Even better, unlike the swords that many of her compatriots wield, Hikifune's zanpakuto takes the form of a gargantuan spoon. This spoon can bring forth tree-shaped constructions that devour any Reishi they can find. All of Hikifune's abilities truly back up her credo that "to control food is to control life," and she cooks her food in service of life flourishing.
One of the anime characters that could beat All Might, the eponymous Toriko is a Gourmet Hunter, who travels and uses his extremely sharp senses to track down the best ingredients in the world. Naturally, he is good friends with the Five-Star Chef Komatsu, who can turn those ingredients into actual gourmet meals.
Komatsu's culinary skills steadily increase as he travels with Toriko, and he grows bold enough to challenge even more fearsome creatures in pursuit of ingredients. He is able to improve greatly on existing recipes such as the Century Soup and Medicinal Mochi, increasing their power (and Toriko's) immensely.
The top student of the elite and intensely competitive Tootsuki Academy has a definite place among the greatest chefs in the world. From a family diner background and fiercely proud of it, Soma both clashes with and learns from his schoolmates in his quest to become his father's successor.
Just a taste of his Fragranceless Fried Rice, one of the wildest dishes ever cooked on Food Wars!, not only causes an explosive reaction throughout an entire stadium but satisfies the God Tongue of Mana Nakiri. Mana's condition of only being able to tolerate flawless food rendered her unable to eat anything for years.
When people go in to eat at Trattoria Trussardi, they come out with not only their stomachs full but their entire bodies purified. Trussardi's Stand, Pearl Jam, imbues his food with the power to heal anyone ailment in the eater's body. So long as he knows what's wrong and has the right ingredients (for instance, rare diseases require rare ingredients), Tonio can cook a meal to fix it.
In the episode "Let's Go Eat Some Italian Food," Josuke and Okuyasu investigate his restaurant thinking he is up to no good. But they soon discover that Tonio is the real deal, and the proud chef proves it by cooking them his trademark meals. Okuyasu howls with delight over both the delicious taste and his own newly restored health.
Introduced by beating Fullbody senseless for daring to waste food in front of him, the Straw Hat Pirates' team chef values good food more than almost anything else. He was raised by the cooks of the floating restaurant, Baratie, and his dream is to find the All Blue, an area of sea filled with rare fish just waiting to be caught and cooked into seafood delicacies.
In the Whole Cake Island Arc, Sanji proves that he can literally cook any imaginable dish. When Big Mom is in distress over never tasting Streusen's wedding cake, Sanji must bake a replacement based solely on her heightened expectations of its quality, not what the cake actually tasted like. Using his superhuman sense of smell, Sanji is able to pick out all the secret ingredients and replicate the cake, which is delicious enough to knock Big Mom off her feet and finally calm her rage.
