Shoku King has a lot of problems. Despite being a manga started in 1999, it feels like it belongs to the end of the Showa era. It copies a lot of the beats of Oishinbo (1983-2014) without having an overarching story line I care about. In fact, I kind of want to give Kitakata-san a punch in the mouth for free.

A major theme in older food manga is "pure" or organic ingredients will always produce delicious food and a chef who doesn't use the purest, freshest, organic-est ingredients has lost the right to call himself a chef. This slavish devotion to ingredients ignores the whole purpose of cooking which is to use your skills to make the ingredients you have taste the best they can. So as the chefs puff away on cigarettes, destroying their taste buds without any comment, Kitakata Gary Sue shows up and effortlessly reproduces the dish they became famous for (which he has never tasted), tells them to buy organic, and then rides off into the sunset on his motorcycle.

Does the art make the food look tasty? It's fine. The eaters don't really sell the deliciousness of the food.

I doubt I can sit through another 200+ chapters of this- I can't recommend it to anyone as food manga. Maybe give Cooking Papa or Oishinbo a chance first if you must have an older seinen style cooking manga. Otherwise give
Shinya Shokudou or Nobunaga no Chef a chance.

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