After watching The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring in theaters earlier this month, my girlfriend and I were yearning for more high-fantasy adventures. After browsing on Netflix for a while, we landed on Delicious in Dungeon, which had just wrapped its first season. About one week later, we had already binged all 24 episodes, and there’s no doubt that this unique anime about cooking and dungeon delving will be one of my top 10 shows of 2024.
If you aren’t familiar, Delicious in Dungeon is an anime based on the Japanese manga series of the same name about a party of adventurers who sustain themselves as they travel deeper into a treasure-filled dungeon by cooking and eating the monsters they slay.
While it may sound gruesome from that description (and there certainly are blood and guts), the series combines a rather traditional fantasy adventure story with a show you might find on Food Network. Each time they defeat an enemy, they prepare the remains, season and cook the dish, and present it as if they were serving customers at a fine dining establishment.
The story begins in media res, as Laios and his sister Falin battle a red dragon alongside party members Marcille, Chilchuck, Shuro, and Namari. During the fight, Laios is distracted, dreading the return journey to gather more supplies, when Falin suddenly pushes him out of the way. The dragon snaps her up in its mouth, but before Laios can do anything, she uses a spell to teleport everyone else out of the dungeon and back to the surface.
From here on out, it’s Laios’s mission to locate his sister and save her from the dragon. Even if it did kill her, it’s possible to resurrect adventurers in the dungeon. The only issue is that Shuro and Namari decided to tender their resignation following the disastrous outcome of the last delve, so now the party is down to just three members.
Nevertheless, the warrior Laios, the locksmith Chilchuck, and the mage Marcille descend into the dungeon once more. They instantly see that their lack of funds for supplies is going to make the journey all but impossible, at which point Laios realizes their best option is to simply eat what they kill. Chilchuck and Marcille are vehemently opposed, but when they start trying to prepare a walking mushroom, they catch the attention of a dwarf.
The dwarf warrior Senshi has been living in the dungeon for years, and his only sustenance has been the monsters roaming around. He’s got some quality cookware in his possession and gives the party some pointers while helping them prepare the mushroom. He ends up joining the party and becomes a personal chef of sorts along the way.
At first, the show is more interested in cooking than swords and sorcery. Every battle is a means to an end — that end being a hilariously, impressively detailed cooking segment involving slicing, dicing, skinning, boiling, and frying monster parts. I’d share some of my favorites, but that would spoil the perils the party faces while traversing the dungeon.
Much of the humor springs from Senshi and Laios’s fascination with the potential of any monster to be a meal, while Chilchuck and Marcille are far more concerned with surviving. But beyond all the laughs, Delicious in Dungeon cements itself as a worthwhile binge with its world-building and character development. As the season unfolds, the truth behind the dungeon starts to come into focus, as do the backgrounds of the main characters.
The show does a great job of slowly expanding the world and the mystery without overwhelming us. By the end of the first season, it’s clear that saving Falin is just a small part of a much larger story that will end up changing the lives of everyone on the island.
Fair warning: The first season ends on a cliffhanger. The good news is that Delicious in Dungeon season 2 is already in production, so we won’t be waiting long for more monster meals.
Delicious in Dungeon season 1 is now streaming in full on Netflix.
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