Some manga make you laugh, and some make you cry. Food manga make you open the fridge at midnight. A good one draws a bowl of ramen so well that you can almost smell it, and then it tells you how to make it.
I cook Persian food for my family most weekends, so I have a soft spot for stories where someone cares a lot about a meal. Here are four food manga that do it very differently: a dungeon crawl where the monsters are dinner, a quiet home-cooking story with real recipes, a loud cooking-school battle series, and a classic about a boy chef in old China. For each one I add a short note on how to read it well on an iPhone or iPad, using ComicFlow, the manga reader I build. It is $2.99 once, with an optional $6.99 one-time Pro unlock, and nothing in the reading tips below needs Pro.
Disclosure: I make ComicFlow at Applestan. The reader features below were checked against the app's source code for version 3.7, and the series facts against Wikipedia's entries and the publisher listings they cite, on November 4, 2026.
Quick Reference #
| # | Series | By | Volumes in Japan | Status | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Delicious in Dungeon | Ryoko Kui | 14 | Completed (2023) | Fantasy fans who like world-building |
| 2 | What Did You Eat Yesterday? | Fumi Yoshinaga | 25 (February 2026) | Ongoing | Cooking along at home |
| 3 | Food Wars!: Shokugeki no Soma | Yūto Tsukuda (story), Shun Saeki (art) | 36 | Completed (2019) | Shōnen battles, but with food |
| 4 | Cooking Master Boy (Chūka Ichiban!) | Etsushi Ogawa | 5 + 12, plus 22 of a sequel so far | Sequel ongoing | Chinese food and old-school adventure |
Two of these are finished. If you want a complete story you can read in a few weekends, start with Delicious in Dungeon.
1. Delicious in Dungeon #
By: Ryoko Kui | Volumes: 14 (completed, 2014 to 2023) | Genre: Fantasy / cooking / comedy
A red dragon eats Falin, a young spellcaster, deep inside a dungeon. Her brother Laios wants to save her before she is digested, but the party has lost its money and its food. So Laios has an idea that horrifies everyone else: they will eat the monsters on the way down. A dwarf named Senshi, who has been cooking monsters in the dungeon for years, joins them and shows them how.
It sounds like a joke, and it is very funny. But Kui treats every monster like a real animal, with an ecology, a life cycle and a best way to cook it. The world gets bigger and stranger with every floor, and by the end the story is about much more than lunch. The series won the Harvey Award for Best Manga in 2024. Trigger's anime streams on Netflix, and its second season is due in October 2027, so you have time to finish the manga first.
How to read it: Kui often draws a dish step by step, with small labels on each ingredient. Those labels are tiny on a phone. In ComicFlow, double-tap any part of the page to zoom in on it, and double-tap again to zoom back out. You can also pinch to zoom further. When you find a dish you want to try (or just want to show a friend), tap the page to show the controls and tap Bookmark. Manga text too small on iPhone? has more on reading small text.
2. What Did You Eat Yesterday? #
By: Fumi Yoshinaga | Volumes: 25 so far (February 2026) | Genre: Slice of life / cooking
Shiro is a careful, quiet lawyer in Tokyo. His partner Kenji is a cheerful hairdresser. Most chapters follow a normal day in their life together, with work, family and the small worries of being a gay couple in Japan. And then Shiro goes home, buys groceries on a budget and cooks dinner, and he talks through every step in his head while he does it.
That is why this is the most cookable manga on the list. The food is everyday Japanese home cooking, made in a small kitchen after work, and each collected volume includes the recipe for its main dish. The characters also age in real time, so reading it from the start feels like watching two people grow older together. It has run in Kodansha's Morning since 2007, won the Kodansha Manga Award in 2019, and Vertical publishes it in English.
How to read it: this is the one to read in the kitchen. Put your iPad or iPhone on a stand next to the cutting board. In ComicFlow, Keep Screen On is switched on by default, so the screen does not lock while you chop. And Tap to Turn Page means you can tap the outer edge of the screen to turn the page, so a quick tap with a clean knuckle is enough. With Right to Left (Manga) set, a tap on the left edge goes forward, like turning a real manga page. Both settings live in Reader Settings under Display.
When you cook a dish from a chapter, bookmark the recipe page. Next time, open the book, tap the bookmark badge at the top, and jump straight to it. The badge shows how many pages you have saved, and the list shows a small picture of each page.
Bookmarks on iPad. Saved pages are listed with a thumbnail, and one tap jumps to the page.
3. Food Wars!: Shokugeki no Soma #
By: Yūto Tsukuda (story), Shun Saeki (art) | Volumes: 36 (completed, 2012 to 2019) | Genre: Shōnen / cooking battle / comedy
Soma Yukihira grew up cooking in his father's small diner and wants to beat his dad one day. Then his father closes the shop and sends him to Tōtsuki, an elite cooking school where almost nobody graduates. Students settle arguments with shokugeki, official cook-offs where the loser can lose a club, a seat on the council, or their place at the school.
This is a battle manga, only with knives, pans and very dramatic tasting scenes. The recipes are real, because a professional chef, Yuki Morisaki, worked on the series. Be warned that the reactions to the food are famously over the top, and a lot of readers find the fan service too much. If you can laugh at that, the tournaments are some of the most fun arcs in modern shōnen. It ran in Weekly Shōnen Jump, had over 20 million copies in circulation by March 2020, and Viz Media published all 36 volumes in English.
How to read it: 36 volumes is a long run, so make it easy to find your place. The Continue Reading card at the top of your ComicFlow library shows the book you were reading and the page you stopped on, with a Resume button. And for the big cook-off moments, which are often drawn across two pages, set Page Layout to Auto. Turn your iPhone sideways, or hold your iPad either way, and the two pages sit side by side.
4. Cooking Master Boy (Chūka Ichiban!) #
By: Etsushi Ogawa | Volumes: 5 + 12 (completed, 1995 to 1999), plus 22 of the sequel Kiwami so far (August 2026) | Genre: Cooking / adventure
It is the 19th century, during the Qing dynasty, in an era where top chefs fight for fame and power. Mao is a 13-year-old boy from Sichuan whose late mother was a legendary chef. To earn back her restaurant, he becomes the youngest Super Chef in history and then travels across China to learn every kind of cooking he can, from dim sum to noodles. On the way he meets rivals, friends, and a secret society of dark chefs.
If you grew up in Taiwan or Hong Kong, you may know it as an anime from the 1990s. The manga came first. The story runs across two series: Chūka Ichiban! (5 volumes) and the longer Shin Chūka Ichiban! (12 volumes). Since 2017, Ogawa has been drawing a new sequel, Chūka Ichiban! Kiwami, on Kodansha's Magazine Pocket app. I could not find an official English edition of the manga. A newer anime, True Cooking Master Boy, aired in 2019 and 2021.
How to read it: three series of one story are easy to read out of order. Make one collection for all of them in ComicFlow, so the order is always clear. If your files carry a series name, from the ComicInfo data that many CBZ and CBR files include or one you type into a book's details, ComicFlow also remembers the reading direction for the whole series. Set volume 1 to Right to Left (Manga), and the next volumes open the same way.
Put your food manga on one shelf #
In ComicFlow, tap + New under the search field to make a collection, give it a name like "Food Manga", and pick an icon and a colour. Then long-press any volume and choose Add to Collection. Collections are included without Pro.
Getting these series as files you can read #
ComicFlow reads files you own: CBZ, CBR, ZIP, RAR and PDF. It does not open EPUB, and books bought inside store apps such as Kindle or BookWalker stay in those apps. Two routes work:
- Buy DRM-free where you can. Where to buy DRM-free manga lists the stores I could confirm and what format they sell.
- Scan volumes you already own. Older series like Cooking Master Boy are often easier to find in print. How to scan manga you own covers it.
To get the files onto your iPhone or iPad, Wi-Fi Upload lets any browser on the same network drop a whole series in, and a watch folder in iCloud Drive imports new volumes on its own. Both are included without Pro.
What is included without Pro #
Everything in this post is in the $2.99 app: zoom, bookmarks, Keep Screen On, Tap to Turn Page, right-to-left reading saved per book and per series, Page Layout, collections and the Continue Reading card. There are no ads or ad tracking.
ComicFlow Pro is an optional $6.99 one-time unlock, not a subscription. It adds saved reader presets, Komga, Kavita and OPDS server libraries, Face ID-locked collections and EPUB export for Kobo, Boox, reMarkable and PocketBook e-readers.
How this was checked #
ComicFlow claims in this post were checked against the version 3.7 source code, in these files:
- Double-tap and pinch zoom in the reader:
ComicFlow/Reader/Views/ComicReaderView.swift - Tap to Turn Page, its edge zones and the right-to-left mapping:
ComicFlow/Reader/Views/ComicReaderView.swift - Keep Screen On, on by default, and Tap to Turn Page, on by default:
ComicFlow/Reader/ReaderSettings.swift - The Display, Page Layout and Reading Direction sections of Reader Settings:
ComicFlow/Reader/Views/ReaderControlsOverlay.swift - Reading direction remembered per series:
ComicFlow/Reader/ReaderContinuity.swift - What Pro covers:
ComicFlow/Services/Pro/ProGate.swift
Series facts were checked on November 4, 2026 against the Wikipedia entries for Delicious in Dungeon, What Did You Eat Yesterday? and its volume list, Food Wars!: Shokugeki no Soma and Cooking Master Boy, and the publisher listings they cite.
Related reading #
- 4 manga set in ancient China: if Cooking Master Boy left you wanting more of old China
- 4 manga to binge in a weekend: more series that are hard to stop
- How to read manga on iPhone: RTL reading setup: the right-to-left basics
- How to read comics on iPad: spreads, layouts and tips for the bigger screen
- How to track manga series you're still reading: for long runs like Food Wars!
ComicFlow sends anonymous usage analytics to help improve the app, and you can switch that off in Settings, then Privacy, then Share Usage Data. Your manga files stay on your device. The privacy policy has the full list.
Frequently asked questions
What are the best food manga?
Four good places to start are Delicious in Dungeon, a fantasy adventure where the heroes cook the monsters they fight; What Did You Eat Yesterday?, a slice-of-life story about a couple in Tokyo with a real recipe in almost every chapter; Food Wars!, a shōnen battle manga set in an elite cooking school; and Cooking Master Boy, a boy chef's journey through 19th-century China.
Is Delicious in Dungeon finished?
Yes. Ryoko Kui's Delicious in Dungeon ran in Harta from 2014 to 2023 and is complete in 14 volumes. Yen Press published all 14 in English. The anime's second season is due on Netflix in October 2027, so there is plenty of time to read the ending first.
Can I cook the recipes in What Did You Eat Yesterday?
Yes. Shiro talks through each dish step by step while he cooks, and each collected volume includes the recipe for its main dish. It is the most cookable manga on this list, because the meals are everyday home food made in a small Tokyo kitchen.
How many volumes is Food Wars!?
Food Wars!: Shokugeki no Soma is complete in 36 volumes. It ran in Weekly Shōnen Jump from 2012 to 2019, and Viz Media published all 36 in English.
Can I read food manga on iPad while I cook?
Yes, if you have the manga as files. ComicFlow opens CBZ, CBR, ZIP, RAR and PDF files on iPhone and iPad. Keep Screen On is switched on by default, so the screen does not lock in the middle of a recipe, and Tap to Turn Page lets you turn a page by tapping the outer edge of the screen. The app costs $2.99 once, with no subscription and no ads.
