A review by house_of_hannah
The Anime Chef Cookbook: 75 Iconic Dishes from Your Favorite Anime by Nadine Estero

informative lighthearted

4.0

Thank you so much to Quarto Publishing Group – Rock Point and NetGalley for providing me with an e-ARC; it is greatly appreciated. 

This is a very cute cookbook ! There is a quick introduction that I can relate to as someone who has watched anime since they were a child. There have been plenty of times that I have been jealous of how food looks in anime, and wanted to take a bite. 

After the introduction there’s a detailed list of kitchen tools and ingredients that you might not usually use, but will need for the recipes in this book. There is an explanation given for each one, which I really appreciate. 

There are four categories of recipes here: Appetizers, Mains, Desserts, and Drinks. Each recipe is setup with an instructions sheet that not only gives you a step-by-step on how to create the dish, but also tells you which anime it comes from down to the season, episode, and episode title. There is also a paragraph explaining how this food was used in that anime. I love that they do this, as it really keeps it with the theme. 

The instruction sheets also have a little graphic in the middle that lets you know how many servings the recipe will yield, how long prep will take, cook time, and other misc things such as how long to marinate if that is necessary. Some recipes include tips, or quotes from the anime featured.

After the instruction sheet there is artwork of the food. I do wish they had also included a picture of what the food looks like in real life, as having that side-by-side would be interesting to compare, helpful, and I prefer to have a real life visual of what it should look like when finished.This is a personal preference though.The end of the book is an index so you can search recipes by ingredient.

One thing I really appreciate is that the ingredients lists are done using both the US measurements and metric units. For example, if it says you need 2 cups of something, it will also list what that is in grams. It definitely makes this book more international friendly. 

One odd thing I noticed is that they have a dish for Pokémon Café Mix in here, which is a mobile game, and not an anime. I think to keep with the theme they could have easily just listed the anime as Pokémon, and kept the description the same. There are also some dessert and drink recipes that do not have an artwork of the end result. 

Overall this is a vibrant and cute cookbook that I think most anime lovers would enjoy. I would not say that this is beginner friendly in terms of difficulty, as there are utensils, techniques, and ingredients used that most would not have in their everyday life. I do think this a good theme for a cookbook, and leaves the door open for many more.