How Anime Inspires Our Food

Our founder, Jenn de la Vega, is also a cookbook author who tests recipes for publishing companies. Some authors have been bloggers, Michelin-starred chefs, and podcasters, but a unique project came across her desk in 2021. A major manga publisher, Viz Media, needed a recipe tester for the longest-running anime in the world, One Piece. One Piece: Pirate Recipes had already been published in Japanese, but was in the process of being translated into English, with the release scheduled around the airing of the 1000th episode of the show. Anime is specifically animation from Japan, its genres range from comedy to drama, and can be as short as a few minutes, a tv show, or as long as a full length movie.

To do research, Jenn signed up for Crunchyroll (an anime streaming platform) and decided to watch all of the One Piece episodes to catch up. It was a daunting task, but she ended up loving it and continues to watch food-related anime to this day. As a result, many of the recipes she's seen on these shows have found their way into our menus.

From fantastical "water beasts" and walking mushrooms, to hyper-regional desserts, here are some of the ways anime inspires our food:

One Piece

One Piece is a beloved anime for a reason. The main story surrounds Monkey D. Luffy and his quest to become the greatest, most free-spirited pirate in the world. At first, it seems outlandish and impossible, but along the way, he wins the hearts of many supporters and builds an unstoppable crew.

One of the crew members is Sanji, a chef who has a mean high kick. Because the show takes place across many different island cultures, the food is surprisingly international.

We love pork ribs and have grilled them for most of our menus, but the Water Seven "water meat bbq" resembles Chinese steamed spare ribs you would get at dim sum. Steaming individually cut ribs is much faster than BBQ, it only takes 20 minutes! While it may seem bland, it is bolstered by gingery scallion and soy sauce at the end.

The "treasure-splitting sandwiches" appear after the crew returns from Skypeia. We serve a lot of tea sandwiches for appetizers and cocktail hours. A cool trick we learned from this recipe was to spread butter on one side of the bread and mayo on the other to prevent it from getting soggy. Using raw sushi-grade tuna over canned with a mixture of basil and white pepper makes this snack ultra luxe.

My Neighbor Totoro

Studio Ghibli films had always been some of our favorites as kids, but we didn't think about the food until the official cookbook came out earlier in 2025. It's a small collection of twelve recipes that kids can make with adult supervision.

Set in 1950s Japan, My Neighbor Totoro is about a family who moves to a rural area to be closer to their ailing mother, who is in the hospital. Along the way, spirits reveal themselves to the children as they settle into their new life.

While the corn rice wasn't in the film, it was inspired by the easy rice cooker recipes they would have made as a family. When cooking brown rice in a rice cooker, add 1 sheet of kombu as well as the corn kernels and cobs. The cobs host a lot of "corn milk" and impart a nice, sweet flavor. Simply remove the cobs and kelp when the rice is done cooking. Fluff it with a rice paddle and it's ready.

The "lightning bolt cucumber" taught us a few things despite being super simple. First, we learned about shio kombu or shredded salted kelp. It's a pantry item that is used for quickly adding umami and salt to a dish. Second, we learned a cool way to spiralize Persian cucumbers without a machine. Thread a chopstick or skewer through the center of a cucumber, down its length. Position a knife diagonally when you roll the cucumber away from you on a cutting board. It takes some practice, but it's a lot of fun!

Castle in the Sky

Castle in the Sky, another Studio Ghibli film, came out two years prior to My Neighbor Totoro. It's about Sheeta, an orphaned girl with a mysterious necklace that the sky pirates and the government want to control. The official cookbook is set to release in October 2025.

The "etherium candy" looks a lot like the recently trending crystal candy on TikTok. It is based on kohakutou, which is Japanese for "amber sugar." A sweet jelly flavored with syrup (the kind you see at a coffee shop!) is cut into pieces and dried for over a week, sometimes longer.

An easy mocktail is a non-alcoholic sangria. Wine comes from grapes, so it makes sense that grape juice works well here. Plus, you get to snack on the fruit afterward! It's a kid-friendly party drink that feels grown-up.

Naruto Shippuden

Naruto Shippuden is another beloved franchise that is getting a cookbook (Fall 2025!). The anime follows teen ninja Naruto Uzumaki as he protects his village from outside threats. Any fan would expect a ramen recipe in the book, but we were not expecting a ton of Japanese sweets!

Anmitsu is an example of wagashi, a Japanese plant-based confectionery practice that utilizes seasonal ingredients. It is comprised of flavored agar agar jelly, fruits, Sweet red bean paste, marzipan, ice cream, and unique thumbprint mochi pieces (known as dango). The whole bowl is then drizzled with a brown sugar syrup. It's excellent on a hot day.

Speaking of dango, they appear both in Naruto and One Piece! In the latter, a girl named O-tama in the Wano storyline can make them by pinching her cheek. She feeds them to animals who become intensely loyal to her. These dango are dressed with a sweet and salty soy reduction and red bean paste. Many dango are simply boiled rice cakes, but these are skewered and fried to give a texture similar to toasted marshmallow.

The "potato hurricane" is a fun, carnival-style dish dressed with a tasty powder made with wasabi and aonori, a new condiment to us. Aonori is a dried green seaweed or laver, an excellent sprinkle for rice, eggs, and fried snacks. It's a base component of furikake, but we didn't know you could buy it separately.

Laid Back Camp

Laid Back Camp is about high school girls who join a camping club. It's not just any camping, it's mostly winter camping, and the thing they look forward to the most is the food they will cook. It's ambitious compared to the camping trips we've been on!

Instant curry ramen is prominent in the first episodes of seasons 1 and 2. We tried instant curry somen noodles with a few chopped-up pieces of fried tofu, snap peas, and crushed tempura nori. It's something you can take with you on a trip, just add boiling water.

In the Laid Back Camp movie, the girls enjoy a salmon stew. Tinned fish is portable and an excellent source of protein! We tried it without cream, a mix of rice and par-boiled vegetables.

Other Anime We Like

We could go on and on about food in anime, but here's a list of other shows we appreciate that have great culinary moments.

• Polar Bear Cafe is exactly as it sounds. A polar bear who loves puns runs a cafe for humans and other animals. It's like an animal version of Cheers, sometimes, it feels like Seinfeld.
• Delicious in Dungeon was a popular manga (like many of the above) and was recently made into an anime on Netflix. It's about an adventuring party amid a losing battle with a dragon. Broke and discouraged, some members leave, and the others commit to making their way back to rescue someone they left behind. To solve the money problem, a helpful dwarf teaches them how to eat the enemies they defeat.
• Kiyo in Kyoto is a great look at regional Japanese cuisine. The main character, Kiyo comes from Aomori with her best friend Sumire. They train to become maiko, junior geishas. When Kiyo is told she isn't qualified, she takes over for the house cook to support Sumire's career.
• Bartender: Glass of God is about high-end cocktails. A bartender with a mysterious past makes the best drinks in town. A hotel manager attempts to recruit him to her company.
• Deaimon: Recipe for Happiness features many types of wagashi. Nagomu returns to his family's confectionery business after a failed career in music.

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