Isekai / reincarnation / fantasy mangas have been huge these past couple of years. There are many interesting mangas with various topics and themes out there, but “cooking” is one theme that I can’t get behind.
I love cooking mangas in general. I’ve read Mister Ajikko, Chuuka Ichiban, Yakitate Japan, Shota no Sushi, Oh! My Konbu, Shokugeki no Soma, and many more. In these mangas, no matter how ridiculous it gets, it is usually based on real world ingredients. The final product is often exaggerated but the flavor is something I can actually imagine. I’ve actually attempted to make some of them and read about others who have done the same.
But this is often untrue for cooking scenes in fantasy mangas. For example, cooking is a major part of Drifting Dragons. They would make dragon meat dishes that are similar to real world dishes and go into details about how it tastes. In Campfire Cooking in Another World with My Absurd Skill, Mukoda would make real-world dishes but isekai monster meat, and how great they taste. But… so what? No matter how much you describe the taste to me, I don’t know and will never know how a dragon or orc taste.
I’m not saying those mangas are boring. I actually really enjoy both Drifting Dragons and Campfire Cooking, but I just can’t get into the food part of it. I would probably enjoy them even more if they glossed over the food and spend more time on other things.
I think cooking could be a good way to help describe the culture and socioeconomic conditions of an Isekai world. (I.e. if a famine occurred in a kingdom, the various dishes in that kingdom could highlight the differences of it as compared to a neighboring country). But yeah, as an Isekai solely about cooking may not be terribly interesting
I weirdly like the setup of Isekai Shokudou because it uses this "restaurant" as a melting pot for all the different cultures of this other world to come together and interact with each other. Well setup aside the show doesn't do a whole lot with it either and it ends up being kind of very boring. I wish they'd do something more impressive with their concept instead of using it as a base for an episodic slice of life show :/