This is a strange one to review. Restaurant to Another World is a show about an eatery that, on Saturdays, opens its door onto a fantasy world. In the fantasy world, mysterious free-standing doors that lead to the place’s interior appear, leading strange individuals from all over the fantasy world to stop in and have a bite to eat.
Each episode consists of, typically,
two vignettes, each of which follows a different fantasy character
and their interaction with the restaurant, and particularly a given
dish that’s sure to please the person who ordered it beyond their
wildest dreams.
This is strange to review because… that’s really it. Kind of like Flying Witch this is very “slice of life” show kept narrowly out of actual “slice of nothing” territory by the fact that the vignettes have individual character and weave together to create a picture of the interaction between the. Oh, and the food. This is not an anime you want to watch unless you’ve just eaten, or are just about ready to, because the detail and care taken with the food is amazing. I dare say that the meals, rather than the fantasy characters, are the real stars.
Because I realized this, I tried
something fun: I would look at the episode’s title (naming the
vignettes by their dish) and, before watching the episode, look up a
recipe for one of the dishes and attempt to make it after viewing.
Some I didn’t manage to anywhere near replicate, others came out
pretty good, and a couple have become household staples. So instead
of a typical review, I’ll quickly go through the episodes, giving my
thoughts on the vignettes and the dish I prepared
Beef Stew/Breakfast Special: The episode I didn’t cook for because I didn’t know what I was getting into. Beef Stew concerns the Red Dragon, a powerful entity who tacitly protects the restaurant and enjoys her favorite dish in both human form and, as take-out, in dragon form. It’s calm and quiet and doesn’t have much plot, giving you a chance to soak in the atmosphere. Breakfast Special, instead, is mostly plot. It introduces Aletta, a vagrant girl with horns who stumbles across a door by chance. The chef takes care of her when he discovers her and offers her part-time work as a Saturday waitress, helping her get back on her feet. Aletta will show up in most, if not all, of the remaining vignettes and her story, roughly, continues in the background.
Minced Meat Cutlet/Fried Shrimp: these are more what you get for most of the show, a pair of stories that introduce someone to the restaurant and show them getting what will become their favorite dish, in this case a ruin explorer seeking her teacher’s last great “treasure” and a knight who was in desperate need of sustenance to keep carrying an important missive. I made the Minced Meat Cutlet, which was fairly acceptable from the recipe I used, but more work than it was worth: something I’d order happily, but not necessarily make again
Spaghetti with Meat Sauce/Chocolate
Parfait: Chocolate Parfait is a simple story about a princess finding
a magic door while confined to her home and enjoying a treat.
Spaghetti with Meat Sauce gets more into the nature of the union
between the two worlds since it centers around a food magnate who
partners with the restaurant, learning culinary techniques and
profitable advances (like dried pasta) in exchange for providing
fantasy world ingredients so the chef can adapt his recipes to native
tastes. I made the Chocolate Parfait. It’s about as decadent as it
would seem. After all, it’s a chocolate parfait, there’s not much
that can go wrong.
Omelette Rice/Tofu Steak: Tofu Steak is
pretty basic (introducing us to vegan elves of the setting).
Omelette Rice, however, has an amusingly different format, with a
narrator treating it as almost a nature documentary for the lizardman
champion who enters the door and places his order as part of a tribal
ritual. I made Omelette Rice that day, which was somewhat cheating
as I already had Omurice down pat.
Pork Cutlet Rice Bowl/Pudding a la Mode: These episodes introduce us to a lion man gladiator who needed food badly and a half elf sorceress working on magical refrigeration to keep her pudding treats. I made the Katsudon (Pork Cutlet Rice Bowl) and it was one of the biggest culinary wins for the show, becoming a near-weekly household dish after.
Sandwiches/Steamed Potato with Butter:
The episode is more internal to the restaurant: Sandwiches concerns
the characters we’ve met so far debating among each other while
dining whose favorite dish makes the best sandwich. Steamed Potato
with Butter is focused on Aletta again, as she learns to appreciate
the fairly simple recipe, and is inspired to make her life on her
other six days a little better, using what she’s learned to bring
happiness even when she’s not working as a waitress. The title left
me stymied, though. I would have been able to replicate Steamed
Potato with Butter exactly if I’d watched first, since the chef walks
Aletta through the whole process, but I made sandwiches that day.
They were sandwiches, and nothing like the show.
Curry Rice/Chicken Curry: Curry Rice
tells the story of a shipwrecked sailor finding the door, which
spares his sanity and possibly his life until he’s rescued years
later. He returns via a door in civilized lands and enjoys his old
favorite. In Chicken Curry we meet another of the Dragons: the black
dragon, incarnation of death, who lives on the moon because her true
form causes anything nearby to wither and die and she doesn’t bear
living things any ill will. A door appears on the moon and she takes
the form of an elf to enter without causing hell, falling in love
with (and having a bottomless appetite for) the spicy chicken curry.
The Black Dragon becomes a second waitress, paid in Chicken Curry. I
made Japanese Curry Rice for this the first time and… I’ve made it
pretty much every week after to portion into lunches. It’s a dish
I’ll praise up and down.
Hamburg Steak/Assorted Cookies: Hamburg
Steak is another normal one, featuring a sailor led to the restaurant
by a mermaid. Assorted Cookies, though is another one with a
different structure. The cookies in question are an import to the
Fantasy world from Earth, via Aletta, who is integrating into society
and finding another job thanks to the contacts she’s made in the
restaurant. Naturally, I made Hamburg Steak. Japanese-style Hamburg
Steak is a great dish… but it needs to be cut properly with a side
like rice as the flavor was very strong, and I didn’t know that the
first time, meaning my go wasn’t the most pleasant experience.
Fried Seafood/Melon Soda Float: Fried
Seafood is a “dwarves being dwarves” moment and more about the
booze than the food. Melon Soda Float features a quasi-arab trade
prince, his infatuation with the princess from Chocolate Parfait, and
his sister’s insistence that he should bloody well talk to her while
he has the chance to secure her heart as well as a promising state
marriage, while both siblings enjoy cold drinks and respite from
their hot desert home. I made a Melon Soda Float… or rather failed
to. And you might think that sounds like the simplest recipe yet,
but I found a way. What I made was still good, but it wasn’t a melon
soda float.
Crepes/Natto Spaghetti: Another pair of
basic moments, though the restaurant has gotten quite full for
interactions now, so there’s more going on in the background than
there was. Not being daring enough for Natto (or really knowing what
to do with it) I made crepes, which are another of those dishes that
are way more work and mess than you’d think.
Carpaccio/Curry Bun: Kind of a two-part
vignette, featuring some sirens coming to the restaurant and being
potential trouble. Curry buns were an interesting use for leftover
curry, but in my opinion Rice is the better pairing.
Pork Soup/Croquettes: an episode that
touches on one of the regulars we hadn’t gotten the story of and his
friends, we also learn the background of the restaurant: how a great
hero(ine) thought dead defeating the Demon King was actually thrown
into another world, and managed to get a bridge back. However, by
the time trans-dimensional magic was achieved, she was settled down
with a son (the father of the current chef) who she didn’t want to
know any life but a peaceful one as she could have on earth.
Evidently it worked. The croquettes worked out as well. Not an
all-time favorite, but absolutely worth having.
At this point, you might be expecting a
simple “pass” because there’s just not a lot of meat here.
However, Restaurant to Another World I feel like I can grade. The
cinematography and pacing is good; it makes each dish feel like an
offering from heaven, so that you want to eat them and will be
thanking your lucky stars if, like me, you have the gumption and
ability to attempt it along with viewing. The world building is also
solid. Just about every angle of the interaction between the two
worlds is addressed and used. Spaghetti with Meat Sauce shows how
cultural exchange can work across worlds. Melon Soda Float (among
other stories) highlights how the restaurant can act as neutral
ground across the vast gulfs of space in the fantasy world that they
don’t otherwise have the mass transit to overcome, even when everyone
returns through the door they entered. Bit by bit we learn about
various corners of this world, and I dare say that despite only
knowing it from the weird cross-section of its people who come in to
have a bite to eat once a week, it feels more vibrant and fleshed out
than some worlds that get whole shows dedicated to them. And, in a
similar vein, the large-scale outlay of the series is very well put
together. As with most mellow slice of life there’s no real reason
to begin or end where we do, it was there before and will be there
after, but for the window we see everything weaves together in a
marvelous way, establishing complex interrelationships that are a joy
to watch in addition to all the marvelous food.
Because of this, I can give Restaurant
to Another World a B+, which is as high as its aspiration reached.
It didn’t want to be amazing or astounding, it wanted to treat you to
a little something for your brain and a little something for your
stomach, and it does that just fine. I’d very much recommend it if
you’ve got your food plans in order.