Anime #34: Feasting On FOOD WARS and LAID BACK CAMP (Patreon)

There’s this anecdote I think about a lot from the third season of the Serial podcast. If you didn’t listen to it, that season is this heartbreaking look at the process and pains of the US court system, done using a specific courthouse in Cleveland as a microcosm. But early on, there’s this moment where the hosts discuss the televisions that play in the various waiting areas of the courthouse. Now, you have to understand that there are people from all walks of life who are there. You have people signing annoying documents. People getting married. People who are in trouble. And people who are about to have one of the worst days of their life. Which means that aside from a few folks, pretty much no one wants to be there… So what the hell do you show on television in the waiting areas? The news? No, it makes people too angry. Sports? It’s often too localized and bores a lot of the audience who doesn’t care. After trials and tribulations the channel they ended up settling on was The Food Network. For it was the channel that had the most calming, even downright pacifying effect. It was the only thing that could serve as a balm in one of the most emotionally charged environments imaginable. But I realize that observation might already make sense to you…

The question is “why?”

What is it about making food on screen that pacifies us? I mean, you can’t technically eat what they’re making, right? But that doesn’t seem to matter. Maybe it’s because “you eat with your eyes first” as the old adage goes. And there’s something inherently visual, even downright cinematic about beautiful food. Better yet, cooking is a process. Meaning it has a natural arc where they start as seemingly disparate ingredients, get culled together through craft and seeming alchemy, then crest into a gorgeous result that makes us all go “I wanna eat the fuck out of that!!!” Honestly, there are few cleaner narratives in our everyday lives. And personally speaking? I’ve had a long history with it all, too. Heck, I remember being excited about The Food Network debuting. But I was already an interested party, having loved to cook most of my early life. I’ve always found it fascinating and always tried to gain more knowledge little by little. Even now, cooking shows make up the vast majority of my youtube diet.

But the wonderful thing about cooking is that, like most art forms, the longer you do the less you realize you really know. So much of your early years is about getting comfortable with heat and dispelling all the “conventional wisdom” you likely heard along the way. No, searing meat does not “lock in the juices.” No, salt doesn’t “make water boil faster.” And you can copy all the recipes you want in the world, but it isn’t until you learn the WHY behind each move, along with what each ingredient really does, that you actually learn how to start cooking. Because EVERYTHING in the food world is about balancing the ratios of salty, sweet, sour, bitter, umami, spicy, starchy, crunchy, saucy, silken, creamy, herby, hot and cold. Across the entire world, you see cuisines strive for those variant qualities and it’s just their land's topography and available ingredients that informs everything about that regional cuisine. France was prime farmland so that gives you butter! Livestock for roasting! And caramelizing onions to make umami! But in Japan, you don’t have the same kind of farmland, you have rice paddies and lots of seaweed and fish, but if you dry them shits it turns out they’re so yummy. It’s all about maximizing what’s available. And every day you discover so much more “why” and every day you discover so much more you don’t know about. I’m utterly in love with that world of understanding.

The way food gets used in dramatic storytelling, however?

It’s a bit more difficult for me to engage. Because as much as I have to learn, I feel like I care too much / know too much about it to really be an objective viewer in the way that most are. This is true even of reality competitions, which isn’t to say I’m against the idea for others. For instance, I loved watching a season or two of Project Runway or America’s Next Top Model because I didn’t know shit about those industries and it’s a fun way to learn about them. But by comparison, shows like Top Chef practically gave me hives. You’re taking a personal, artistic process and trapping it in this hyper crass illusion of often ugly competition. But honestly, even purely narrative affairs often reek of the same kind of reductive attitudes. Movies like Burnt or No Reservations feel like a half-hearted attempt to merely mine those worlds for those stories, but I suppose that’s okay for most, too. But that doesn’t mean I want movies and television shows to be some documentary-like reflection of the industry either. Far from it. In fact, there have been genuine bright spots (most of which I featured on November’s “Hope You’re Hungry” stream), like the brotherly commiseration of Big Night, the creative catharsis of Ratatouille, the delirious vignettes of Tampopo, or the haunting emotion of Pig. All of which accurately reflected both the details and the spirit of their own cooking worlds, while fully integrating them into a dramatic story.

All of this brings us to the intersection with Anime…

Because I have long heard about the merits of food anime and yet I WAS WORRIED for all the aforementioned fears illustrated above. I was particularly worried about what little I had seen from Food Wars and all the things that go with it. But on another level, I was excited, because at this point I understand so much about the values of the form. It’s not just about the gorgeous animation. Anime has this remarkable ability to zoom in on a moment, to pause on the process, and to really take time to get to the interiority, heart, and spirit of that which it was exploring. And when potentially coupled with Japan’s general emphasis on food subtlety and popular understanding of the craft? The results could potentially be wonderful.

And I am happy to report that THEY ARE.

Fighting The FOOD WARS (Season 1)

I really, really wasn’t going to watch this one. I told you as much. I had just seen clips of the horny stuff and I was judgemental and like there’s no WAY this one will capture the subtleties of food and will likely turn the competition into all the cooking conventional wisdom crud I loathe. But upon the pleasant discovery that the first few episodes were great I tweeted about it and I was so happy I was met with this response:

So let’s talk about the sicko part first. Because even in telling people my anime-loving friends that I like this show they were like “ooooh horny boi!” etc. etc. Which is all part of why you can’t really recommend this show to general people? I mean, I don’t know. Three minutes and four seconds into it there is a tentacle porn reference. But after Kill La Kill and Rent-A-Girlfriend I think I’m at that (desensitized?) stage where I’ve crossed whatever fucking rubicon it is where you can chide away all the overt sexuality IF the show after something else completely with the them OR it’s accounting for that in way that is thoughtful (to be fair, I was doing this from the very start when I watched Evangelion). It’s just common to the point of being uninteresting. I don’t know the way around it. And at the same time, even saying that is enormously complicated. Can I recommend this to anyone without a warning? Of course not. Especially when everyone is so stupidly young? Someone asked who my waifu / husbandos were and I’m like WE HAVEN’T MET A SINGLE ADULT IN THIS SHOW YET. There is always this inextricable knot that exists at the center of this - and yet it always seems like it’s just sitting there anyway. So most of the time it’s like you just have to judge it one how it rides the proverbial line? Does the show seem to hate women? Does the nudity cross the gender spectrum? Is it doing ANYTHING more with it? Is it at least having fun?

Thankfully, Food Wars is the fun kind. Which is good because it has fun both being stupidly overt and yet purely within the theater of the mind (except for the head of resort bathhouse guy who just really seems to like letting it all hang). We just know we’re usually guaranteed one foodgasm pershow, but with each episode they get more absurd and entertaining, often ribbing on pop culture. The timing of them is incredibly funny. And I love the show’s seeming bisexual gaze (KumaBear ApronButt - yes I will be calling him that - is an all timer character). We talk about these things with Food Wars because they are so noticeable. You can’t NOT notice them. But in the end, so much of the greater appeal lies elsewhere.

Because the writing on this show is SPECTACULAR.

I mean that. To the point that this show (and my whole anime journey, really) makes me think a lot about the comparative state of western narrative. Because you hear me go over this “basics” shit again and again and again. There’s just so many western shows that want to play the magician, but just end up withholding their critical dramatic foundation. They want to make “10 hour movies,” but that just means they try to stretch out two hours of story by repeating beats again and again and again because they don’t know how to turn conflicts into synthesis or reframe them anew. For them, it’s all about capturing the right vibes, often by aping the texture of that which they seek to emulate. And, of course, that means constantly referencing the things you already care about whether it be nostalgia or pre-established characters from the same world. And thus, the ability to construct a dramatic episode of television feels like it falls more and more by the wayside. Even in Andor, which I adored with every fiber of my being, they still played the patience game. And the reason so few other shows take up the Vince Gilligan methodology of finding a complete dramatic mini-story to tell within every episode? Well, it’s seemingly because most other shows have no idea how to do it.

It doesn’t matter what kind of show you want to make. It starts with understanding that every scene has to have some kind of dramatic import. It’s the Mamet rules for drama: 1. Who wants what? 2. What happens if they don’t get it? 3. Why now? Keep in mind that it doesn’t have to be some high-stakes, end of the world affair either. Because often it’s the little things in life that most compel us anyway. Think about small stakes shows like Freaks & Geeks, the sitcom fare of The Mary Tyler Moore Show, or the office politics of Mad Men.  It can be about how one character likes another one and wants to come off well to them. Along with the all too human risks of embarrassment, humiliation, or outright loss of a relationship. And it’s all about finding the little subtle ways to inject urgency into these most human of emotions, and telling a little story about how the relationships between these characters can change.

The first season of Food Wars is so, so good at all of this.

Starting with the ways it artfully deploys motivations and wants with the characters, then throws daunting obstacles at them with reckless abandon. For it’s a food world full of greedy land developers, egotistical teachers, and highfalutin fuddy duddies. Now, is it painting this culinary world in big, broad gestures? Of course it is. But there’s something so delightfully about this abject clarity. It is completely, totally unafraid to be gauche in its depictions. Because it creates that insatiable drive within the viewer, as if getting us to yell: “yeah come on, Soma, show that snooty so and so what you can do!” But it’s also an urging that makes you realize how much everything rides on Soma’s characterization, which is more complex than it may seem.

Despite his habit of winning, what I love is that Soma is NOT a gifted mega talent who can do no wrong. In fact, Soma is like a lot of my favorite Anime protagonists in that he’s a stone-cold idiot in most ways (like Shoyo from Haikyuu, Kazuya from Rent-A-Girlfriend, and now Denji from Chainsaw Man). But they have this singular defining thing about their own drives, which is this ineffable desire to succeed on their own terms. But with Soma it manifests in peeling back layers of that understanding, often done with the framing of his situation. He comes to this snooty school, full of people hell bent on perfectionism and full of shitty high class standards, but all of whom are struggling with the crushing realities of falling short. But what gives Soma strength is how much his cooking is rooted in a lack of perfectionism. He doesn’t know the implied standards. Which means he doesn’t know to be scared. In that world it can be a superpower. Especially when what he has instead is the hard-earned life of serving actual customers with their livelihood on the line. Everything he’s doing here at school? They are secondary to the experience of his own pursuit. Which is all part of his secret weapon...

He is not afraid of failure.

Don’t get me wrong, Soma hates to lose. But he also knows the immense value of losing. From the beginning of the show it’s showing us how much failure and experimentation are the great teachers. And when it finally pulls back and you realize that he’s been battling his master chef father his whole life and he’s lost 489 times in a row? That’s when you understand how much of his success at school is but a small part of his life’s aims. He genuinely doesn’t care if he fails out. But I will say, this sort of depiction of his father as a competitive sort would normally be the kind of thing that sets off a MILLION alarm bells in my mind, but only if the depiction were a little different. Yes, Soma’s dad is this strong figure, but also note how encouraging and warm he is at the exact same time. You never once doubt how much Soma is loved. They aren’t TRULY competing because they’re already a TEAM. Everything else is about teaching presence. That fist to the chest. The hands being clapped. The last thing he wants Soma to be is distraught or overwhelmed. It’s always about slowing down, focusing, and doing the next right thing. And in the end… I genuinely think this is one of the most important things for an artist (or any professional, really) to learn.

It comes with a caveat, though. Because the first thing is that the only reason you need to create something is just the want to do it. You don’t have to show anyone. You don’t have to be any good at it whatsoever. As long as it makes you happy, do it. The problem is that I know so many people get trapped in that space where they WANT to put things out there. They WANT to be good at it. And they WANT to be validated. But the fear takes hold and they get stuck - and so many emotions bubble up in that space between. And this could be entirely anecdotal, but it’s just the thing I feel like I see more and more in the generation just below? Don’t get me wrong. Maybe it’s good. They’re far more brilliant, sensitive, kind, and vulnerable in ways that I was never taught - believe me, I learned deeply toxic ways by comparison - but it still comes down to those necessary threshold crossings. Because that simple willingness to put oneself out and fail? Or learning how to keep one’s internal fire going while simultaneously callusing oneself to the constant sharp edges? When it comes to creative pursuits, the “be a goldfish” mantra is so necessary in building the callus that’s needed to exhibit one’s passion, that is the thing that is needed for going forth into the world and creating / developing your skill sets.

And bringing it back to Food Wars, we get to see how much that being unafraid of failure was needed for the ecosystem of the school (BTW I’m realizing just how much Japanese narrative art is some kind of extension of “school was traumatic”). When KumaBear ApronButt talks about Soma being just what the academy needed, it’s that fearless quality that becomes infectious to others. Especially in the season’s arc for Megumi Tokodoro, who really seems to be dealing with immense anxiety and imposter-syndrome. I’ll admit, because the show’s initial episodes were so indulgent and quick to frame Soma’s bravery, I was worried that it too would give into that hero complex and keep her some kind of damsel. But it’s funny, I was literally watching with Landon the very MOMENT I voiced that worry to him was the exact moment the show was sensitive to same issue and put Megumi in charge of the challenge. And there was another time I was like, “weird they haven’t given Soma and his Dad a personal moment yet OPE, here it is” as if right on cue. But that’s what good writing does. It is constantly paying attention to needs of the deeper story (i.e. the audience’s wants) and addressing them with tact.

But it doesn’t just cater to what we want, but we need. So often we’ll have a perfectly hateable villain and the way it can seamlessly tweak the context to make me go, “Aw, fuck they’re gonna make me care about this person aren’t they?” is so inspiring. Like when we meet Aldani, he’s swearing himself as an enemy BUT SOMA LIKES HIM AND HIS GUSTO ANYWAY. The show sets Meat Girl Nikumi as the perfect foil then BOOM she’s in bowl-soc and helplessly crushin’ on our boy. Even the first season’s ending battle is so dramatically smart (where Soma loses to Akira by a point) because it sets them up for the next stage and humanizes him so well. The show is full of these kinds of great dramatic decisions. For instance, in the meeting of the 10 it’s actually important that we don’t see the other seven. Because it’s not about withholding information in this case, it’s about understanding what you really need to be dramatic. Because the crass “world building” instinct would be to show you all 10 and define them now, but right now it would just be meaningless information. It should be a list of details to memorize. Instead, you just have to know there ARE then and reveal one when they can come in and be the right contrary figure to the story at hand. You don’t want to put the horse before the cart, nor do you want to put the cart 1000 feet away. You want to build your throughlines carefully and earn only what you have at hand. Which is why I love that all our tertiary characters get to show what they can really do in the finale.

Part of what makes the cooking sequences so enthralling is the clear love / understanding of food (though at the end of this article I have a whole super-nerdy analysis postscript where I talk about whether or not I think each and every little choice would work). But for every character I love that their dishes are story driven. When it comes to the housemates, from Glasses kid, to Ryoko, to even the guy with hair in their eyes, I feel like the Harry Potter world has nothing on them. And all of Soma’s dish reveals are so simple, so elegant, and yet so unafraid to come at things in ways one might not dramatically expect. But really, if we want to hold up one moment as the pinnacle of the season it’s Episode 22 that made me cry, for it is where Megumi’s arc fully comes together. The most brave acts are the ones that are hard won, and often part of a hard won life. Maybe it’s knowing the life of the small fishing town. Maybe its seeing them at her side. Maybe it’s that pesky charm in her hands. They’re all part of the core dramatic mechanisms that got us here. And in the end you don’t have to say much, you can show all the work that happened along the way. The tears come from the storytelling already having been done. And it’s the mark of a show that’s so well written.

But I can imagine that right now (or at least based on what I’ve tweeted) you may be in a rush to tell me all the ways it falls apart in later seasons. That’s fine, but I ask that you don’t. And know I’ll probably write about the show again when I finish or get to a stopping point. But for now, I’m not really interested in all that. This is a column about why the start of the show works so damn well. And why the last episode evokes such a good notion for any professional moving forward:

“There’s so much more I want to learn.”

LAID BACK CAMP or Lo-Fi Treats to Relax / Study To

In the paragraphs above I talked a lot about the tenets of drama and how most western shows are good at capturing a vibe. Please understand, this was not something I ever meant as a slight. It’s a skill like any other. And certainly hard to accomplish. It takes a deep understanding of aesthetics and textures to create feeling, and uses deep artistry to craft them with consistency. And then getting that to add up to a tonal balance? It’s quite hard. And to that, Laid Back Camp is kind of the ultimate example of “good vibe art.” So much of it about how it feels. Just this combination of music, sound, and imagery. I can’t tell you how often it felt like I could FEEL the crisp air or the warm cup in my hands. All working to the purpose of gentle show that means to evoke a gentle feeling.

The real question is if it’s more than that?

This is a difficult hair to split because it may seem like I’m saying I want the show to be something it is not. But that might not be the case. In effect, I want Laid Back Camp to make the best version of what it (may or may not) be trying to accomplish. Let’s say the show wants to be laid back and all, but still wants you to be invested in the story. For that, you want the feeling of genuine warmness and empathy to extend into the characters themselves. For that, you need catharsis. For that, you need a dramatic conflict. But for that, there are many who believe you have to lean HARD into the drama to accomplish those kinds of releases (for instance, the way Food Wars does with its seeming life or death battling). But it doesn’t have to quite operate that way at all.

Instead, it can operate as a smaller thing. It can be played understated. A character should want or not want something to happen, and even with the tiniest stakes, the release can still feel so big. Simply put: the clarity of the idea can be a 10, you can still play it at a 2. A great example of this is a movie like Magic Mike XXL, which never feels big on conflict - even though there’s LOTS of conflict - because they’re constantly solving said conflict with therapeutic understanding as they go along, which results in the feel good vibes. But perhaps a better example is a series like A Place Further Than The Universe. Yes, there are BIG things in that show (loss and grief, etc), but so many of its beautiful moments are about the bravery of taking a train ride, even the bravery of having a dream itself. It’s so good at making small things feel like the most epic things, so that your heart feels alive with purpose. But so much of this depends on digging into your character dynamics.

But Laid-Back Camp (the first core at least) doesn’t seem interested in really digging into much of anyone’s interiority, let alone problems. The main conflict is really just about a girl who wants to be left alone, but going on to discover people in a friend group. But mostly, it’s just a lot of waiting as they all do their various little semi-grouped adventures. I can’t help but feel like there should be full of these little meaningful exchanges. Instead the events of the show feel like they just kind of happen with little to no dramatic shifts. It’s more just explaining how a grill works or remarking that “cars are so comfy.” It’s purely observational. And again, there’s nothing inherently wrong with this, it’s the perceived sin of demonstration vs. dramatization. Because we’re not seeing the characters shift against each other.

Honestly, right now I can’t tell you anything about the characters other than the main girl wants to be left alone, the other girl is more excited, the girl with glasses is a little bit bossier (also is this an anime trope?) and honestly have no idea what the other two have going on? They all so seamlessly fit in with textures and vibes,but  I’m missing all the little fun subtle things that I really feel like could make it sing. Like this is going to sound so silly, but I’m also pretty sure they don’t know how to go after a joke? Like it knows what a cute affectation is. For instance, the scene where she’s “like a caterpillar falling” off the side sure is endearing, but any time you would try to put that in the story you’d find a little set-up to make the joke land and instead, like so much of the show, it just happens.

But once again, it comes down to what you want.

On a scale of gentle, sweet entertainment, from 1) genuinely just putting on the “lo-fi beats to relax / study to” video to 10) the big emotional catharsis of A Place Further Than The Universe - I just want Laid Back Camp to be near the middle. Something that gives me all the same vibes and camping information, but also something to really to hold onto in the shifting nature of these friendships. The only “problem” is that it’s closer to the lo-fi beats video than the middle of the spectrum. But that might not be a problem for you at all. Maybe you want the lo-fi beats of it. Heck, Landon literally said it was his favorite sleepy time show and I think that makes a lot of sense. The lack of drama is exactly what literally allows us to disengage… I just don’t really watch shows like that? I love good vibes as much as the next person, but I need something a bit more than to hold my gaze. Something more than a textural balm on a busy day. Something I don’t have to half look at, but whole look at, all part of the small wish for the small quiet thing that fills my heart. That is, the kind of art where you get that warmest of feeling and yet echoes on in your brain still long after.

But still please know how much I can appreciate the vibe itself.

* * *

Without further ado, it’s time for…

NERDY “FOOD WARS” RECIPE EVALUATION!

As I said, it’s hard for me to watch a lot of narrative food programming. But this show is FASCINATING to talk about from a cuisine perspective and I’m gonna shallow dive into some of the dishes and deep-dive into some of the others. Let’s do this!

Ep 1 - Roast Pork, Just Kidding - This was exactly when I knew I was in good hands, food-wise. Soma had a simple challenge to make a meat dish to stave off the property poachers (which they sabotaged), but luckily he had some extra stuff for his own breakfast to save him. So he makes a “roast pork” that is basically mashed potatoes and mushrooms, both super absorbant, wrapped in bacon, roasted so all the flavor seeps in, and then drenched in a pinot noir sauce (that’s basically sauce vin rouge). Now, being sure those flavors penetrated really would depend on the thickness of the log. And as drawn, it’s perhaps a little too thick, but it looks better this way. I’ve made lots of things like this and it would likely be smooth, delicious, everything you imagine it would taste like. Again, it was immediately letting us know we were in good hands (I also know a lot of chefs inspired the recipes in the manga, but the fact there were many collaborators can help fuel discussion of what works).

Ep 2 - Transforming Furikake Gohan - I eat variations of eggs and rice for breakfast, like, three times a week. It’s probably because Western breakfast usually makes my stomach hurt and just makes me more sleepy. I particularly don’t like sweet breakfasts except for the occasional rare mood. Often, I’m just drinking espresso and eating a croissant. But most of the time it’s a little rice, a little egg, and whatever leftover ingredients are in the fridge. Here, the term Furikake refers to the delicious nori-rich seasoning that goes on a lot of rice dishes, but there are so many variations it becomes part of the catch-all. This variation? Honestly, it’s one of those dishes where I’m like, “I gotta taste it” to see if it really melts away and gives that texture in the pockets of rice. If it really is luxurious then it COULD BE as great as it seems. It could also just be pockets of wet rice and egg. Which would still be fine.

Ep 3 - Boeuf Bourguignon - One of my favorite rustic french dishes, but I have a lot of thoughts on the execution of this one. For one, I feel like they could scoop most of that salt off the top and it honestly would be fine? Also the honey marinating thing feels like they’re taking a scientific fact that’s technically true, but they would have been having to marinate that beef for awhile beforehand to get that effect? But this is precisely the kind of nitpicky thing that doesn’t matter too much to me because dramatically it’s a lot of fun. Just as it’s fun to see those scheming nerds ruin their own dish. THAT’s just great writing.

Ep 4 - Mackerel Burger and Pepper Mackerel with a Purée Garnish - I LOVE both these dishes. Like, I can’t tell you how often people look at my fridge and be like “there’s nothing in here!” and I have a can of tuna or artichokes and other pantry items and can make something completely delicious. I mean, that’s the whole POINT of having a bunch of pantry items. Plus, I love mackerel and all its fatty, delicious, slightly bitter components. I’d eat the shit out of that burger. But I also love the end of this one where Kumabear ApronButt shares his own mackerel dish in turn. It seems like my favorite style of dish. Perfectly cooked fish, a simple sauce with little ingredients that make the salt, sweet, sour, bitter, and umami accents pop and thus make the fish taste like the most amazing thing in the world. This is basically the staple of how I cook fish and I can’t tell you how much the simple understanding + perfectly cooking it can blow people’s minds. I swear if you don’t like fish - other than allergies of course - you just haven’t had it prepared right. There’s few things better.

Ep 5 -  Revamped Mackerel Onigiri Chazuke and Ravioli Di Aragosta - I tried to make Onigiri for the first time a month ago and that shit is haaaaaaard. Basically it’s a consistency thing. You have to get the exact right consistency / seasoning / temperature so that the rice can stick together and yet doesn’t clump up OR dry out. Even the filling decisions, which seems like it can just be filled with whatever you find delicious, has to have the right seasoning to go with the rice around it so that every bite tastes balanced. As I complained, it’s haaaard. But at the end of the episode we are also treated to Erina’s lobster ravioli, which is one of those over-priced dishes you can find in most Italian restaurants and it’s usually a shitty version of the idea. You’ll get rubbery lobster with an over-sauced and bland result. But when done perfectly as it seemingly has been here? When the lobster is delicate and the pasta is thin and sumptuous and the sauce is velvety and decadent, but combined with the little notes that balance it out? Ugh, there are few things better. But I can count the number of good versions I’ve had on one hand.

Ep 6- 7 - A5 Japanese Beef Roti Don Vs. Chaliapin Steak Beef Bowl - Ahhhh, a study in contrasts (and sorry this entry is going to be a looooong explanation). But what I love about this is how much it highlights WHY I almost never cook an actual steak anymore. Part of that is environmental sustainability and so it’s just a far more rare occasion in general. But the other part of that is that if I’m cooking meat, I prefer slow cooking methods. I’ll get a big cheap cut of a shoulder or butt (pretty much the same thing with four legged animals) and I’ll slow cook that shit down and make a variety of pulled meat dishes / soups / noodles / carnitas / whatever needs a little delicious protein added. And most of the time, it’s a MORE delicious result. Which is why you perfectly see the two contrasts here.

On one side you have MEAT GIRL NIKUMI (and hahaha the american bikini), who makes a whole big to do about A5 Wagyu Beef (what’s funny is this is something I was telling Landon about as we watched and a minute later she did the same exact lecture). But as the show gets into the standards it never actually answers WHY is it so damn expensive and good? Well, that’s because they’re really a different breed of cows that have this intense fat marbling and amazing flavor. Why is it so much MORE expensive though? Well, it’s not just that the cows are prized and that shipping is expensive. It’s also the cost of raising them is so much higher in Japan because there is very little grazing land by comparison. But because of this quadrupled high price, you also see a lot of imitators. Australian Wagyu comes closest to the marbling (at halfway), but what’s perhaps telling is that I actually like some of their steak cuts BETTER because you can get some nice char on them, whereas A5 can be really bitter and wasted if even the slightest bit overcooked. American Wagyu is coming along, but these things take generations. And then there’s the Wagyu that isn’t Wagyu at all. Thankfully, the scam seems to have run out of juice, but for a long time seeing “Kobe Beef” was a meaningless term that was just designed to make you pay more money for the same average angus product. But to get what they’re insinuating at here in the episode, you really have to get the real stuff, which is that high rating of A5 out of Japan.

Now, the thing is that when you cook A5, you barely have to do anything to it. It’s like caviar in that way. It already IS the thing you want. There’s a restaurant out here in LA called Providence that does the single best version of it I’ve ever had in my life. They do these long, almost dowel-like cubed strips that are perfectly (and very quickly) cooked over binchotan coal and lightly salted and then cut in half and GAH it just melts in your mouth. Picture below!

So when I was watching Nikumi doing her giant cooking method with the full chunk I was like UHHHHH, THIS IS ODD - which doesn’t mean it’s inherently wrong, it just seems like she’s going to way overcook parts (again, when you overcook A5 all the fat comes out and the dry charred texture isn’t nearly as delicious as parts with light mallard reactions and gentle smoke). The other thing about A5 is it’s almost always better alone then it is with any other kind of sauce or accoutrements. And I LOVE that that’s part of what brings the dish down in comparison.

Because Soma’s Chaliapin Steak Beef Bowl is a perfect idea. It’s a cheap, but delicious cut (the moment where the audience reacts to it being on sale might be my favorite beat in the show) that’s fatty and chewy, but if it’s slower cooke you get that amazing texture that breaks down. See the reason people usually like new york strip steaks and filet mignon is because it’s free from all those tougher fatty parts and thus it has a more pleasant texture (even though it is comparatively flavorless to Rib Eyes and certainly other cuts). But if you COOK THE OTHER CUTS RIGHT then you get that fat to melt and the flavor is ten times better  (you should never have anything rubbery or skin-like in a steak). And then combining it with the incredible umami rich quality of those onions, having both caramelized one and ones with crunchy texture? PERFECT. And here, the rice is the perfect counterbalance to the intensity. It’s the holistic nature of a whole dish, perfectly executed. One that shows that having all the most expensive ingredients in the world is worthless if you’re just going to get in the way of them. And her added rice and ingredients GOT IN THE WAY. Whereas most of the time? The great chefs know how to let the ingredients speak for themselves and get out of the way of what they do best. All in all, a perfect food episode. A bazillion stars. No notes.

Ep 8 - Aigamo Grilled with Spices - I looooove this as a character introduction of the Aldini Brothers, in that OF COURSE there’s another kid(s) at the school who grew up in a family restaurant and would be so put off by what Soma said at inauguration. Better yet, he’s RIGHT to be. The dish is also a pretty good interpretation of making an Italian duck dish, but using Japanese ingredients. To that, I can’t tell you how much “fusion food” is bullshit (and also ends up being a racist erasure of those kinds of dishes that already exist), but this is way to do it with tact, understanding, and using local ingredients to create the new thing of something closer to your sense of home (because this is the real history of how these kinds of dishes are made). Though calling tha sauce a “salsa verde” is sort of odd. But in the end I love that Soma relishes in the competition and loves their dish and how much this feeds their rivalry, which is both real, and yet more aggrieved from the one side. It’s so endearing.

Ep 9 - Char Okakiage - There is perhaps no bigger gulf in approach between America and Japan than when it comes to fried foods. In America, so much of it is deep and batter-y with intense seasoning and this overwhelming crusty deliciousness that could make a gym shoe tasty. But what doesn’t help the comparison is that whenever Americans have had Japanese tempura, they likely had soggy, gluey versions of it, often caked into the center of various overblown sushi rolls. But getting to taste Tempura mastery is INCREDIBLE.  It’s so delicate yet if you get it at the exact right second after it’s fry, it has this light yet SHATTERY CRISP texture that accentuates the product. Tempura masters know the exact thickness and flavoring of every item. And it is ESPECIALLY true of tempura vegetables. I could eat perfect tempura vegetables for hours. And here, I love their Char dish (also, Char is basically the same thing as salmon or trout, which is also basically the same thing as each other, it’s just lake vs. ocean. vs. lake, mostly, though even that changes). Man, I wanted to eat this so bad.

Ep 10 - Nine Vegetable Terrine - Terrine’s are… interesting. I don’t know, I honestly haven’t eaten a ton of them and most of them have been meat / pate / gelee (jelllo) based and I’ve never had one that’s knocked my socks off. But I love the way that it functions on a story level here because it’s basically set-up to show off how Shinomiya is the MOST hate-able person. For there was cruelty to his ingredient selection where he set some people up to fail no matter what, including their going off the recipe to correct him. But what feels so cruel here is actually set-up for REMARKABLE catharsis we’ll come to in a few episodes.

Ep 11 - Chou Farci - Ahhh, stuffed cabbage. I honestly equate it mostly with a lot of Eastern European cuisines where cabbage is basically part of the lifeforce, but it’s a “peasant dish” that’s all over Europe anyway. And honestly, stuffing food into whatever leafed vegetable is grown in your area is a staple of cuisine around the world. But as we get into the story of Shino I realize how much it feels inspired by Alain Passard at L’arpege, who is one of the greatest chefs in the world. I’ve been insanely lucky enough to have eaten there a couple of times, one of which was one of the greatest meals I ever had in my life. But back at one point in the 90’s, he was considered the world’s master roaster and he was so sick of working with animals, but “had only done 3% of what he could do with a carrot.” And so he suddenly turned all his restaurants into being vegetable-focused. Doing this in France in the 90’s? Let’s just say journalists handled it poorly and asked questions like “why are you spitting in the face of your fellow chefs?” But he kept at it, kept his 3 stars, and kept changing French cuisine in the process (though you could actually say Michel Bras did it first). But that’s enough about French cooking history!

Because I like that this story takes little elements of Passard’s life and applies it to a completely different story with Shino. Instead, he’s an outsider who came in and took advantage of the incredible farmland of France (arguably the best in the world, outside of California) and created a revelation. Here, his stuffed cabbage dish shows off all of that bounty. I’m sure he’d want to use the famous Bresse chicken of France, which are arguably tastiest birds in all the world, but instead used Jidori - which is a cross Hinaidori chicken with the Rhode Island Red. And they just so happen to be my favorite chicken to buy available here. The funny thing is that it’s even cheaper than most regular American chickens because it’s a smaller bird because it’s not pumped with hormones. But way tastier. And in keeping with the delicious bounty, Shino adds morels, foie gras, etc. Honestly? It sounds like overkill, but I’d have to try it because if you get the ratios right it could also be INCREDIBLE. But what I love more is how it gives Shino a personal story of WHY he cares about sticking to the recipe, where the cruelty comes from, and how much he had to deal with the casual racism of France. It’s both an empathy builder and something that reframes our rooting interest, all of which comes out with…

Ep 12 - Megumi’s Rainbow Terrine - This is when I knew the show was not just going to be good, but special. It’s not just because the show smartly forces her to take the driver's seat in the narrative. But it’s THE CHOICE she makes for her dish. Because her serving yet ANOTHER terrine? It’s so smart because it’s doubling down on the intent of why she wanted to make changes to the dish in the first place. It’s not just the memory and personal nature with her mother, but the resourcefulness and the little details of how it comes together. It looked even better than Shino’s terrine. In the end, is it enough to save her from her fate? Of course not. She’s still a student. He’s a master. But the main judge reveals that this was all an attempt to showcase exactly what’s been happening under the surface here. That Shino has plateaued as a chef and that his cruelty is being born out of something other than finding himself - and something far differing from what it means to teach good cooks. It’s brilliant storytelling, for it unveils the actuality within all their hearts so effortlessly, making it the best way to take apart the stakes of the “go home” challenge in a way that doesn’t feel cheap, but instead feels cathartic for ALL parties. Which is probably one of the hardest things to do in writing.

Ep 13 - Eggs! Eggs! Eggs! - I’ll say that one of the things I found odd is that the head honcho of the big mid-season challenge is the guy who heads up all the resort restaurants of the school’s cooking empire???? Don’t get me wrong, resort restaurants employ a lot of great chefs. But the highest echelon of cooking usually involves flagship restaurants or small focused joints that have little to do with the resort restaurant world. I mean, even when it comes to Japan, I have my list of the 40 places I want to go before I die and they range from immaculate spots to holes in the wall and there is not a single resort restaurant on the list. But! It’s really kind of a different, and important philosophy because it provides a whole different series of challenges. Because you don’t get a lot of randos walking into a 3 star Michelin flagship joint. At resorts, you do. In fact, you’re serving a high volume clientele, often with families with a whole range of palettes. In some way, it’s much harder because it is your job to please them no matter what.

That’s why I adore the nature of this challenge and how it takes place over the next two episodes. I especially adore how character driven it all is. Aldini's Insalata Frittata is one of those simple dishes, but could be SO dry or too runny if not cooked perfectly right. It’s like quiche minus the baking element. And Megumi’s Breakfast Oden seems like an INSANE amount of work for each serving, but reflects that part of her personality (but definitely something hard to pull off in the time limit). Plus the whole intro to Alice Nakiri and her Three Forms of Egg Dishes reveals how we finally have a gastronomy kid in the mix (what is this, 2006!? sorry food joke!). But so far all her science dishes seem spot on idea-wise.

And lastly we get Erina Nakiri's Eggs Benedict? It’s funny because there are so many lackluster versions of it in the world. Why is that? Because it requires three different forms of timing and execution, but if you put enough lemon acidity in the hollandaise and get the spice and salt rations right there is nothing more appetizing in the world. It’s just that “getting it right” is really such a damn pain in the ass that I only cook it for other people on special request. The idea that Erina could pull off that many plates at breakfast? It really does prove she’s a machine. Someone who thinks of every detail and why people eat what they eat. And thus, we finally deal with Sōma’s problem dish…

Ep 14 - Sōma’s Mini Soufflé Omelette - It was BOUND to happen. Because even great chefs can sometimes think myopically, especially young ones. There’s this great moment I love from the Eater’s Mise En Place series (I watch every episode) where it’s about two young great chefs at Cote, the only michelin star Korean BBQ restaurant in NYC https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oAADFdfa-G4&t=2s&ab_channel=Eater . There’s a moment where you see the two chefs talk about creativity and they mention how the owner / proprietor of the place is a bit of a stickler and hardass, basically (to be clear, he is also the person who believes in them and is showcasing them). In dish testing, they prepare this seafood tower prototype that’s full of all their creative aspirations. And the proprietor comes in to give it the okay or not, but he INSTANTLY spots all the problems. It’s too tall to reach, the caviar needs to be optional, half the dishes are impossible to share and should be turned into shooters, etc. And you can see them sort of be like “ugh,” but the guy is 100% right. You need to know how the eater actually engages with the dish. It doesn’t just exist in your head. It can’t just be pretty. Their entire experience must be considered. It is not an abstract. It is EVERYTHING to the final result. And you must always reckon with that moment to be a great chef.

Which is why I love the first core’s finale. Soma created a dish that’s light and springy and delicious, but forgot the time component (I’ve made these things before and they are delicious but yes CRAZY time sensitive). Thus, all the souffles deflate and look sad and he’s surely a goner. Erina relishes in his failure, but as I stated earlier - failure is also a teacher. More importantly, it requires ingenuity to try and muscle through a bad idea and overcome the problem in the heat of the moment. But there’s no way he can create a new dish, right? So Soma stops. He slows down. He thinks about the next right thing. If he could just make them fresh to order. If he can just get one customer. Then one more. Just go beat by beat. The way it all crescendos and rises to meet the challenge, to not WIN, but to merely get by, is a spectacular moment in the show. I adored it.

Ep 15 - Zuppa Di Pesce and other dishes of the world - Ahhhh, the reset episode. I really love this because it’s such a deepening of our understanding of Soma’s relationship to his dad. I also like how it clarifies his Dad’s cooking history, along with his mission as the wandering chef. It actually kind of reminds me of all those stories of Joel Robuchon wandering the globe after he shut down all his Michelin star restaurants (note: he had the most stars in the world at the time). But you’d hear about him showing up in Baltimore and discovering the soft-shell crab for the first time and being like what the hell is this!???! Sure, we may know it here in America, but the world is just so big and full of endless possibilities and that curiosity is what seems to make Soma’s Dad tick. He’s also introducing them to a lot of foods, from the essentials of spice like za’atar, to some snake dish that isn’t exactly specified? But he seems to enjoy making odd experiments, too… Like father, like son.

Ep 16 - Apple Risotto vs. Special Rich Ramen - Another moment where I was like OH THIS IS SO SMART when it comes to the food storytelling and specifically the way it has peeled back the layers of characterization with Soma. Because all this time we’ve seen him throw into competition with reckless abandon, there’s this idea that it could be this deluded ego thing - but the idea that his fearlessness comes from the endless competition with his dad? And that he’s never won? It says so much about what’s really happening here. And moreover, there’s so many ways this could lead to some weird, toxic feeling (and maybe it will come out) but it rides this line where his dad is clearly being jestful, loving, and supporting at the same time. No matter how much they could “compete” they already know they are a team. And what I love here is that Soma’s dish is actually really smart and the idea that he’s trying to create a balance of light and savory though something read a little unbalanced to me about it still (also he’d probably need to lemon zest not lemon if there’s dairy in there because it may make it curdle). And the Dad’s dish? It’s one of those perfect counterintuitive things of making a light, vegetable focused dish that tastes counter to expectations is so smart (especially along with the story about the monk). Great stuff.

Ep 17 - Mozuya's Karaage - So! Fried chicken is probably one of the most important, delicious, and complex dishes in American history. To understand what is, where it came from, and how much it has to do with Africa, the exploitative nature of rich slave owners, and our deeply racist history is critical - just as it is understanding how much America’s military history influenced how the dish was part of its development with the rest of the world (and how it met other fried chicken histories, too). Anyway, the plot here is weirdly reminiscent of the fast food fried chicken sandwich wars that were to come just a few years later. Still, I love any competition that’s based on something like “WE HAVE TO SAVE THE REC CENTER” but the way it gets applied to Soma’s neighborhood reclamation is critical. Also I love that it understands how much THE CHALLENGE from their enemy is that it has to account for food that is not ready to order, but can stay crisp and warm until it gets home. Or… what if you go to your strengths and do the exact opposite?

Ep 18 - Sumire Karaage Roll - I kind of laughed to myself because the big saving invention is basically the short-lived Mcdonald’s Snackers, but not only are those a paltry version - it’s also something that’s much less geared to American eating style and as it says in the show, it’s more a riff on Vietnamese Banh Xeo. The thing is that EVERYTHING is about execution and the dish is about understanding the region’s eating convenience, immediacy, and foot traffic - which is the reason their neighborhood was almost annihilated in the first place. It’s the perfect example of fighting fire with fire. Again, I love how much of the food design is story centric.

Ep 19 - Kozhi Varutha Curry and Goa Fish Curry - And now, we enter the last stretch of the first season that is all about curry! Which is okay because you are talking about one of the most endlessly dextrous foods on the planet. It also makes me think about that incredibly stupid and racist “humor” column that was put in a MAJOR PAPER and I won’t link to called “you can’t make me eat these foods” where the stupid racist American made fun of Indian food and said it was all just “one spice.” It genuinely made me furious. Forget all the infinite other dishes it ignores, thinking curry was “one thing” is just… I mean, not only is curry a sauced dish made from a VARIETY of spices, but there are almost endless variations therein. And the whole thing is the endless COMPLEXITY of it. It’s not just simple tweaks of sweeter, spicery, etc. It’s the endless vegetal and floral notes and the way one aspect can shift things one way or another. There’s a reason the show picked it for the end of the season and it IS that very dexterity. This learning episode not only sets up that endless capacity for variation, but also sets up our main opponent, who is secretly someone we like and empathize with.

Ep 20-21 - Curry Time! - We need to get the parameters of how hard this cooking competition is going to be so first up we get the brash kid we just met who barely got any points, which serves to show how harsh the judging can be. We also had the recent introduction of Nao and her Jet Black Curry Laksa - and on the story level it’s perfect, but I have NO idea what to do with the recipe because I honestly have no frame of reference for how it might taste??? But then it quickly shifts to Erina’s underling Hisako and her semi-traditional Mutton Meat Shimotsu-to-Curry, which wows the judges and shifts Nao’s creepy stalker energy to HER?!? Again, we just met Nao, but the show is so good at putting the food mechanics into the story mechanics.

Ep 22 - More Curry! - We recently got introduced to Tough Tall Chinese Gal Hōjō who stands over our Megumi with her hand to the side and there’s such energy between them I immediately shouted at the screen CAN THEY BE GIRLFRIEND AND GIRLFRIEND?!?! Anyway, it’s also a great set-up for not just a new foe for Megumi, but a misunderstanding, which is so much fuel for catharsis. But Hōjō’s Pineapple Fried Curry Rice is such a perfect, delicious dish that I could eat all day and night. But what I love about the structure of this show is that we’ve had so many characters we see operating in the background but haven’t seen their competition dishes. Thus, it makes this final series of episodes feel like their coming out party in a way that is genuinely cathartic.

First there is Yūki’s Duck Cutlet Curry - We’ve always seen her as this cute, funny character chasing after the animals she’s raising, but I love how her dish shows off her GAME game, with a simple execution, done flawlessly. Then we have the Aldini brothers and love how it’s a loving competition BETWEEN them finally, from his brother’s Curry Bread Calzone which shows he belongs in his own right - to Takumi Aldini's Naporitan Curry Fettuccine. But I love how they identified how unappetizing it looks, while understanding how delicious it really must be (which feels like it would be true for the deeply browned dish). On the other side of the spectrum we get our inventive gastronomy kid in Alice Nakiri and her Thermal Sense Curry - Now, gastronomy is interesting because it’s often hard to get a sense of what it would taste like, but I looked into the recipe of this and yup, it seems right like it could totally work as a dish that was served at El Bulli back in the day.

But finally there is Megumi Tadokoro and her Goosefish Dobu-Jiru Curry - And it’s the dish / moment that just turned me into a bawling baby. It’s not just beating Hōjō. It’s the everything. Every struggle she’s had. Every bit of set-up. It’s the fact that she’s grown so much and her fishing town is there and how much we are all born from the circumstances of our hard won experiences. My dad lived in a fishing town and I spent half my life there growing up and I can’t tell you how much Portuguese fish stew is central to it and I just… everything about this. Especially that shot of her holding the little academic achievement card. And more, what it means to have a community that believes in you. The little gestures just mean so much. And it speaks to everything wonderful about this show.

Ep 23 - Mostest curry! - It’s so funny that after the height of the last episode I was like “oh yeah, there’s still A Block.” First up we Ryo’s French Curry Lobster Rice with Cognac - which, if balanced, I’d eat the shit out of. But I also imagine there’s a lot of people who watch this episode and are like “oh no, a manic depressive goth boy I want to smooch him.” though, that’s never been my type of dude? Anyway, I love his character, but then Nikumi Meat Gal brings it with Dongpo Pork Curry Don and I LOVE that she went with something that shows off her Bowl Soc skills because it’s recipe-based character development! Then we get to see Ryoko, our purple haired (secret goth!?) and here Curry Soy-Natto Rice - which I love as a reveal with the fermentation queen. Because fermentation is such an interesting part of modern cooking that I feel like it hit it’s zenith just a few years after this episode? Anyway, then Zenji glasses ghost boy gets to show off his White Potage Curry Udon - which I’m sort of curious about because it’s one of those dishes that has a deceiving look and I can’t quite get a grasp on what it would taste like, though something about the look reminds me of David Chang’s famous frozen foie gras dish from Ko. There’s a few more dishes, but most of it leads up to our main opponent Akira and his Naan Pot Pie Curry. I love how much of it is about unleashing that aroma inside and my lord does this dish look amazing. If you love chicken pot pie, you can just imagine everything that feels both familiar and new about this one… I want to eat it a million times.

Ep 24 - The Final Curry - I can’t tell you how much I was curious about what Soma would serve and in the end he went with Curry Risotto Omurice - which is basically… something that SEEMS like another big honking omelet. But here’s a better question we should ask…

Why eggs?

Seriously, it’s actually an important question. Why his fixation? Why is it in so many of the dishes? What does it represent? Though some of this gets into a lot of east asian food history. Because remember how I said there wasn’t a lot of grazing land? Well that means there wasn’t a lot of milk either, which means there wasn’t a lot of dairy, which means there wasn’t a lot of butter either. And since cuisines are built out of their conditions, it means that the way fat and richness were used in dishes came from, you guessed it, eggs. It’s why you see egg bases in so many east asian pastries and sweets from custards, to egg tarts, to Tomago, to so much more. Even with modern availability to other dairy products, the taste for, appreciation of, and devotion to eggs is such a fundamental part of so many east asian cuisines. And what I love is how much Soma’s cuisine constantly comes back to that humble, incredible ingredient that can do so much. Here in his final dish, it is but a velvety covering that releases the curry inside. Here his risotto seems like that perfect, endlessly balanced affair. A silky, savory, spicy rice with mango to brighten it all up. But what I love is that he still loses to Akira, which is not just a set up for things to come, but something that highlights Akira’s own hard won efforts for his own entire life (much the way Megumi did). And moreover, Soma knows what it can teach him.

The great thing about FOOD WARS is that, yeah, yeah, it uses competition for stakes and dramatic flare, but it never once loses sight of how those things are secondary to the larger character feelings that exist underneath it. It’s a show about the way we define our own victories, along with our own losses, all en route to growth and finding the greater strengths within. It’s all a part of what makes the show, well, the show. And getting into the nitty gritty of every recipe detail somehow felt like a part of that. A way of seeing the passion for detail in the show and reflecting it in turn… You know, I once went over every detail of every battle I had in Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice… and somehow this last section is the nerdiest thing I’ve ever written… But I love food.

So I wouldn’t have it any other way.

<3HULK