Ever since he was a child, Souma Yukihira helped his father cook in his restaurant, constantly challenging him to cook-offs in anticipation for the day when he would finally win. However, when his father suddenly decides to leave to go on a trip around the world, Souma is sent to the Totsuki Culinary Academy, an elite cooking school where only the top 10 percent graduate. Here, Souma learns that not only are some of his classmates top-tier chefs, but they also engage in intense competitions called ”food wars”.
Never before has cooking been so intense, and so occasionally lewd. If you are looking for more anime recommendations like Food Wars, then head on down below.
Anime Like Food Wars!
For Fans of Delicious Food
Yakitate!! Japan
After being briefly kidnapped by his sister as a kid and shown the wonders of freshly-baked bread, Kazuma became obsessed with it. After a bread maker discovers that Kazuma has the “Hands of the Sun,” which are of the perfect warmth for making bread, he passes on the trade. Now Kazuma seeks to make the best, most unique Japanese bread to rival all other breads.
Yakitate was the original food anime, although it is more focused on bread. Both shows share a focus on comedy, but they also provide some education by delving deeper into the preparation process. They both also feature ample food battles to elevate what would be a slice of life anime into the shounen genre. Who could have thought competitively baking bread could ever be so interesting?
Gourmet Girl Graffiti
Ryou Makiko lives alone while attending art school in the city. Unfortunately, while Ryou loves to cook, all of her dishes have been tasting horrible to her lately. Depressed, her aunt calls one day and tells her that her cousin will be staying with her sometimes on the weekend. When Ryou cooks for her cousin, suddenly she realizes that her cooking wasn’t bad, it was just meant to be eaten with others.
Both series are about girls having orgasmic reactions to food, do I really need to say more? I do? Well, okay then. Like Food Wars, Gourmet Girl goes into the actual recipe and science of food while making it, but it goes further to give tips on how to best enjoy a meal as well.
Ben-to
One day while You Satou is trying to get himself a half-priced bento, he is knocked unconscious. When he awakens, all the bentos are gone. Hungry, he tries again the next day only for the same result. In this world, if you want to get a sacred half-price bento, you must be willing to fight for it. In a world where only the strong get to enjoy bento, Satou must train to fight or stay hungry.
You like a side of tits with your cooking anime? This a great follow-up to Food Wars then. Although technically Ben-to isn’t about cooking, just food, both shows have ample fan service as well as tasty-looking food.
Toriko
In this world, happiness is measured by what you eat. As such, people are always on the hunt for ultimate ingredients that are gotten from powerful monsters. Those who battle these monsters for ingredients are Gourmet Hunters. This story follows Toriko, a Gourmet Hunter and his chef friend Komatsu. Toriko aims to cook the perfect meal while Komatsu wants to reach the level of master chef.
While both shows feature shounen-like battles, Toriko has actual battles while Food Wars is just cooking battles. However, both shows put a huge and oft-comical focus on food where the best food is made out to be the best thing ever.
Cooking Master Boy
Cooking Master Boy takes place during the fictitious era after China’s Qing Dynasty where the country was overcome with cooking wars. Chefs challenge each other to earn the respect of a nation and to become China’s top chef. Enter Mao who, after the death of his mother, travels China to improve his cooking. Along the way he meets friends and rivals alike, but mostly, he cooks.
Both series revolve around the main characters fighting in cooking contests. However, while Food Wars can be serious at times, Cooking Master Boy is mostly comedy. Both series also share the same over exaggerated reactions to food.
Yumeiro Patissiere
Ichigo Amano is clumsy and not good at anything, but one day she has a chance encounter with a master pastry chef. When he discovers her amazing palate, this famous pastry maker offers her a chance to attend the prestigious St. Marie Academy, a cooking school that specializes in desserts.
Yumeiro Patissiere is like Food Wars for kids. No weird orgasm shots. No clothes bursting off. No guy that cooks in nothing but an apron. It is just a cute little girl that tries her best at baking cakes against people that are better at baking cakes.
Sweetness and Lightning
After the death of his wife, high school math teacher Kouhei Inuzuka is left to care for his young daughter, Tsumugi. He does his best, but his busy schedule and poor culinary skills limit them to eating convenience store food separately. One day, his daughter expresses an interest to eat together after talking to one of his students in the park, Kotori, who deeply enjoys food. He rushes over to the restaurant owned by the student’s mother, but she is not there. While Kotori tries her best to cook for them, her skills are lacking. However, together, Inuzuka-sensei, Tsumugi, and Kotori learn to expand their cooking skills.
If you were watching Food Wars for the food, and not the occasional bit of ecchi, Sweetness and Lightning may be more your style. It is a series about learning to cook, but it also throws in a big dose of wholesome single father raising his young daughter moments.
Restaurant to Another World
The nondescript Youshoku no Nekoya is a cafe that has been in business for 50 years. However, while it serves salarymen and other workers most of the week. On Saturdays, it closes down to the public in order to serve special guests, mythical creatures that come from another world looking for comforting cuisine.
If you enjoyed Food Wars because it was food-oriented and something different, Restaurant to Another World is similar in the way that it is food-oriented and a different kind of isekai. It is essentially just serving good food to fantasy beings.
Kakuriyo – Bed and Breakfast for Spirits
Since she was a child, Aoi could see spirits. After one day feeding a hungry spirit, she is whisked off to the hidden realm where an ogre states she will be his bride. It seems her grandfather sold her off to marry him in order to satisfy his debt. Instead, Aoi refuses and works off the debt owed in a bed and breakfast.
Whereas Food Wars has that competitive shounen element to it, Kakuriyo leans more towards the shoujo side with its pretty supernatural boys and light romance plot. However, the food is still very much on point and there is that added element of inn service to it as well.
Today’s Menu for the Emiya Family
With the Holy Grail War no longer a threat in Fuyuki City, Masters and Servants adjust to this time of peace. For Emiya Shirou, he has taken it upon himself to cook for Saber and show her the joys of modern cuisine.
While this is a spin-off series of the Fate/Stay anime, I wouldn’t have included it if it weren’t easily accessible as a standalone. Knowing Fate will help you appreciate the characters, but if you are just in it for the applicable cooking recipes and/or food, then you’ll be all set.
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For Fans of Passionate Main Characters
Dr. Stone
After years of unspoken feelings, Taiju Ooki is about to confess to his crush. However, at that moment, a bright green light engulfs humanity, and suddenly everyone is turned to stone. Thousands of years later, exactly the right series of events lines up in nature and leads to teenage genius and best friend of Taiju, Senku Ishigami, to be cured. After using the cure on Taiju, the pair set out to jump-start civilization and save humanity by speeding through all the most useful inventions of human history.
Both series have main characters that are very good at what they do, and have powerful passions for it. It is this passionate talent that inspires countless others to follow them. While Dr. Stone is about science, some of that science is also food-related as well.
No Game No Life
In the real world, siblings Shiro and Sora are NEET shut-ins. However, in the virtual world, they are a legendary gaming duo. One day, after a strange email, they find their reality taken away as they are transported to the realm of Tet, God of Games. Here, Shiro and Sora must play games to defeat the sixteen races of this world as well as Tet in order to become the new gods.
While these series are vastly different at a glance, both series are proof that if you are good enough at something, you can bend your surroundings to your will so long as you fit within the confines of the rules. Each series is addicting because of how clever they make the matches as well.
Bakuman
As a child, Moritaka Mashiro wanted to be a manga artist like his uncle. However, after certain events transpired, he refocused his efforts towards studying in middle school. One day, aspiring writer Akito Takagi notices some detailed drawings in Moritaka’s notebook and approaches him to propose they become a mangaka team together. Realizing that he might be able to get his crush if they make an anime adaption of it with her as the voice actor, Moritaka agrees, and thus, the mangaka Muto Ashirogi is born.
Both Food Wars and Bakuman focus on characters that have a love of one particular craft, and want to follow that to the highest level. In each series, you learn a fair bit about it yourself as the audience.
Smile Down the Runway
Fujito Chiyuki has dreamed of being the star model for her father’s modeling agency since she was a girl. Unfortunately, she stopped growing and is considered too short to be a good model. Regardless, she kept pursuing her dream. Only did her resolve start to waiver in her last year of high school. However, after meeting Tsumura Ikuto, a classmate with a passion for designing clothes, does she join him on a seemingly impossible journey to achieve their dreams.
Ultimately, both shows highlight how a passion can be the best fuel to carry you forward. Furthermore, both series also highlight topics that aren’t often so showcased in anime. They also have the occasionally unexpected ecchi moment.
For Fans of Weird Competitive Theme Schools
Kill la Kill
Ryuuko Matoi is on the hunt for her father’s killer, and her only lead is the missing half of his invention, the Scissor Blade. On her quest, she arrives at the prestigious Honnouji Academy, a school that is ruled over by the super powerful Satsuki Kiryuuin and her Elite Four. Believing Satsuki knows who killed her father, Ryuuko challenges one of the elite, but gets beaten due to their special uniforms. After receiving a special uniform of her own, Ryuuko sets plans into motion to dominate the school and find out what happened to her father.
In Food Wars, they fight over food and are often scantily-clad. In Kill la Kill they just plain fight and are often scantily-clad. Both main characters are brash and instantly challenge the most powerful and skilled members of the school, only to get their butt whipped.
Silver Spoon
Yuugo Hachiken is hard-working and studious, but tired of living up to expectations. Deciding to leave academic life behind, Yuugo enrolls in the Ooezo Agricultural High School in Hokkaido, believing learning agriculture to be much easier. However, he is soon proven wrong. The farm life is anything but easy.
Like in Food Wars, Silver Spoon features a school where the students are highly specialized in their field. They grow crops, raise livestock, and they engage in competition. The difference is that the school in Silver Spoon isn’t training chefs, it is training those that produce the ingredients. That being said, there is still a fair bit of cooking in Silver Spoon too.
Ouran High School Host Club
Ouran Academy is a school for the wealthy elite, but Haruhi Fujioka, hoping to pursue her dream of becoming a lawyer, got in on a scholarship. Haruhi wants to avoid all the glitz and glamour of the school, but while looking for a quiet place to study, she winds up finding an eccentric host club. After breaking a vase, she winds up having to join them to pay off the debt. There’s just one problem, they think she is a boy.
Both anime series feature highly eccentric schools. In Food Wars, they have gardens, raise livestock, and have high-stakes cook-offs. In Ouran, they allow a host club to basically do whatever they please with the school. They also consume a lot of fancy food in Ouran, too, but more snacks and less actual meals. Both shows also feature main characters that are often seen as commoners or somehow not worthy to be there.
Kakegurui
Hyakkaou Private Academy is an institution for the elite of society with a very special curriculum. These students are the children of the wealthiest people in the world, but they won’t need athletic prowess or book smarts for a successful life, they will need to know the art of the deal and how to read people. So instead of traditional classes, this school features a curriculum of rigorous gambling where the winners live like kings and the losers suffer. However, they haven’t seen anything yet until they meet new student, Yumeko Jabami.
While Food Wars and Kakegurui differ in what their school is about, they have that same competitive vibe. Food Wars is all about cooking while Kakegurui is about high stakes gambling. Both series also have a passion for being unexpectedly lewd.
If competitive classrooms are your jam, here are 10 Anime Series Where Classmates Compete With Each Other
Classroom of the Elite
Koudo Ikusei High School seems like a paradise with state-of-the-art facilities and where almost 100 percent of students go to university or find employment. However, while the students appear to have a good amount of freedom, only superior students get favorable treatments. After being careless on his entrance exams for a particular reason, Ayanokouji Kiyotaka finds himself dumped in D-Class with the other inferior students.
While Classroom of the Elite is in no way about cooking like Food Wars, it does feature an ultra elite, ultra competitive school. Within, a new student dramatically shakes things up in a very Souma-esque sort of way. The big difference is that Kiyotaka is a lot more restrained in personality.
Do you have more anime recommendations like Food Wars? Let fans know in the comments section below.
