The Cambridge Geek

Restaurant to Another World Anime Review
Restaurant to Another World

This is another one of my "what the hell?" reviews.

One of the few anime of the summer season I've bothered to watch, Restaurant From Another World is a mishmash between an anthology show and Food Wars! Shokugeki no Soma, which was a show about competitive cooking in a culinary school that ran on an elimination syllabus. I'm sure they had a good reason.

This show is far less competitive, being about a small-town restaurateur who plies his trade in a pocket dimension between multiverses. His trade being to produce food that outstrips any of the medieval fantasy worlds he serves to. (Though that does feel a bit cheaty. I'm sure we could have invented molecular gastronomy in the middle ages if they'd just had a blender.)

Restaurant to Another World-1
He's taking back three portions for twenty people. Git.

The show's setting means that it's very low energy overall, with the action coming from the glimpses of the lives of travelers we see visiting the restaurant. These might be gladiators, vegan elves looking for tofu (some multiverses are weird enough that tofu becomes edible), witches who dedicate their lives to making magic refrigerators to store icecream, or dragons. (They like their chilli extra hot. And then lick it daintily from the pot like an oversized scaly cat.)

Restaurant to Another World-2
It'sa spicy meatball.

While not as "action-y" (definitely a word, honest) as Food Wars, it shares that show's obsession with showing the meals in glorious detail, starting with the value of the ingredients and inevitably describing the structure of the whole being greater than the sum of its parts. Don't watch this programme with someone on a diet. You may not survive.

It's very silly and doesn't have much of an over-arching plot, but doesn't really need it. It survives by being more fun than a lot of other shows and I can't begrudge it that.

One for fans of takeaways.

Recommended.

Tagged: Anime Drama Isekai Food and drink porn Crunchyroll Subbed