異世界食堂

ISEKAI SHOKUDOU

ANIME

STATUS
COMPLETE
EPISODES
12
RELEASE
September 19, 2017
LENGTH
24 min

DESCRIPTION

There is a certain restaurant in the first basement level of a multi-tenant building in one corner of a shopping street near the office district. The historical restaurant, marked by a sign with a picture of a cat, is called "Western Cuisine Nekoya." This restaurant looks completely normal through the week, but on Saturdays, it opens in secret exclusively to some very unique guests. During these hours, doors in various areas of a parallel world open to allow customers of many different races and cultures into the restaurant.

(Source: Crunchyroll)

CAST

Kuro
Saori Oonishi
Aletta
Sumire Uesaka
Tenshu
Junichi Suwabe
Aka no Jou
Shizuka Itou
Victoria Samanark
Yukari Tamura
Adelheid
Reina Ueda
Sarah Gold
Kiyono Yasuno
Fardania
Youko Hikasa
Renner
Shino Shimoji
Arute
Ayaka Suwa
Heinrich Seelemann
Tomokazu Sugita
Shareef
Atsushi Tamaru
Tatsugorou
Houchuu Ootsuka
Sirius Alfied
Hiro Shimono
Artorius
Motomu Kiyokawa
Sia Gold
Sumire Morohoshi
Christian
Katsuyuki Konishi
Roukei
Yoshitsugu Matsuoka
Arius
Ayaka Asai

EPISODES

Dubbed

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RELATED TO ISEKAI SHOKUDOU

NOVEL FantasyIsekai Shokudou

ANIME FantasyIsekai Shokudou 2

MANGA FantasyIsekai Shokudou

Cover Art for Isekai Shokudou: Youshoku no Nekoya

MANGA FantasyIsekai Shokudou: Youshoku no Nekoya

REVIEWS

AdmiralNyan
75/100
Gourmet Episodic Goodness!
Out of all of the serials I watched this season, Restaurant to Another World would have to be one of my favourites. It was feel-good and dangerously hunger-inducing.

In the corner of a local shopping district lies a Western-style restaurant called Yōshuku no Nekoya (Western Cuisine Cat Restaurant). During its business hours, Monday through Friday, it serves normal food to normal folks. The restaurant is normally closed on weekends and holidays. However, on Saturdays it secretly opens its doors to very unique and unusual clientele from some very unique and unusual locales.

The most disappointing part of this entire series was the severe lack of kitty cats. The restaurant’s name has the word “cat” in it. The least they could have given me was a little feline mascot!

I just had to get that off of my chest. Aside from that, it was such a fun and delectable series. It’s set up in an anecdotal means with episodes that don’t connect plot-wise. The story itself is simple and straightforward: it’s about a fancy restaurant that caters to diverse, fantastical races from varying planets, and the different ways that these folks come across the Nekoya.

Aside from the delicious and breathtaking dishes that are served at this restaurant, my favourite part of the show consisted of the characters. Even with it being episodic in nature, the anime does a phenomenal job of being character rich and exhibiting stories that share motifs of strength, overcoming grief, loneliness, and insecurities, just to name a few. The experiences that so many of the clientele undergo vary from light-hearted to tender to deeply emotional. There’s an underlying warmth in the hardships they all over-came during their lives that I found to be very comforting and inspirational. Their trials and tribulations are reflected in the foods that they come to love dearly.

For example, we have a lion who was beaten and taken into captivity as a slave where he was forced to fight for his freedom. His favourite dish is katsudon. It’s a dish with lightly fried meat, usually pork, over rice with eggs. The dish helps rejuvenate him and helps him to gain his strength. Thus providing him an advantage, which he uses to obtain his freedom much faster than anyone believed possible. His story also provides a lesson in not judging someone by their appearances as monsters can be hidden within even the most genuine looking folks.

There is another story that revolves around a young girl who used to visit the restaurant with her grandfather where they’d eat parfaits. After he passes away, she falls into depression and her physical health begins to suffer. She’s a very lonely young woman. One day after coming across the magical door, she’s taken to Nekoya. The memories associated with the restaurant help inspire her to get healthier. She begins smiling and laughing a lot more, and the overall quality of her life improves drastically. That was one of the episodes that resonated the most with me.

So, the stories in each episode truly make the series worth watching. It’s an all-around feel-good, heart-warming anime. If that’s not enough to peak your interest maybe the animation will be. It’s beautiful, especially where the food is concerned. Every single dish they showed, even if it was something that I’m allergic to or cannot eat like pork, made my mouth water. I made the mistake of watching this on an empty stomach one evening. My tummy roared louder than my cat! However, when I watched it after having dinner with a full belly, I still found myself desperately hungry for whatever was being shared in the episode.

I think my biggest complaint, aside from there being no kitty cats, is the mystery behind Nekoya. How did it come to exist in a way that allows it to reach different dimensions, as well as different planets? What is the secret behind this unique capability? A part of me wishes it was discussed in the serial, but another part of me really appreciates the enigma. In a way, it adds to the charm.

It may be not super spectacular, but it’s a decent show that is worth watching, especially if you’re in the market for something that is uncomplicated, savoury, and compassionate.

7.5 sandwiches outta 10!
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Dalia
93/100
World building through food makes for a surprisingly unforgettable experience.
Restaurant to Another World is... bizarre. I mean after all, the execution of the anime is exactly as the title says; it's a restaurant to another world. It's a bit challenging to even call this an isekai in a traditional sense, but rather it takes the form of the blending and merging of worlds and cultures.

For the unitiated, the series follows a restaurant which operates regularly in the modern/real world almost every day of the week. Though on the day of Satur (the 7th day of the week, Saturday), its doors open in all sorts of locations strewn about another world. It is clear that there is a force manipulating the restaurant in where these doors might appear, though the magic and power surrounding the restaurant won't be the focus of this review.

The series takes on an episodic format. Each episode the list of regulars at the restaurant expands as we continue to see the same faces enter on the 7th day of each week, each with their own signature meal that they order and feel adamantly is the best on the menu. Each with some reason why they feel so strongly about that meal. When a customer orders a meal, we learn about their life through what they say or through their trip to the restaurant. For a series in which the main characters almost never leave the restaurant, this series has some of the greatest world building I've seen in an anime within this genre.

I caught myself towards the end of these series having a moment to recognize that as this restaurant was sitting on my screen showcasing the banter between customers, I knew and had come to like every customer there. I knew their stories, I felt fondly of them. Though in a way that felt natural. Through the characters, you begin to understand the world. You understand their behavior and their interactions.

The series does a fantastic job at capitalizing on this in order to expand the world further and add some additional depth to our main chef and waitresses.

The light novels for this series release so infrequently compared to others, and are the author's only active project. While other light novel authors may have multiple ongoing light novel projects, write their novels in both webnovel and light novel formats at the same time, or enter into regularly serialized contracts for the frequency of releases, this doesn't appear to be the case here. At no discredit to the series that follow the aforementioned format, the time taken for what seems to be yearly releases for the light novels of Restaurant to Another World is noticeable. The care and attention given to each customer's story, the energy of the characters and how naturally they seem to blend into the world, and the overall atmosphere.

I'm not sure that there's much more than that to say about this anime, but I think that's a good thing. It's so simple in concept, so comforting to watch; yet also so much more heartwarming, special, and expansive than I could have imagined. We're not here to solve the problems of the fantasy world. We're just here to offer a warm meal to those that are.
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