The anime dish I want to try the most
During summer breaks when I was a kid, with no school work to do, one of the few things we would do pre-internet times was to watch cartoons. My go-to channels would usually be Nickelodeon for some good ol’ SpongeBob Squarepants, Fairly Odd Parents, and other shows that were prominent in the early 2000s. I’d also flip to Cartoon Network to watch Codename: Kids Next Door, Dexter’s Laboratory, and Xiaolin Showdown.
But every so often, I get quite bored especially if they just show reruns of old episodes; that would lead me to flipping channels. Anything that has real people in it, I wouldn’t watch it. It felt too real and too boring for me. Then, I stumbled upon a show in AXN that got me hooked right away.
The first thing I saw was a kid chopping a Chinese cabbage at god-like speed. The chopped cabbage would fly across to another table and landed uniformly. He then proceeded to cook with such impeccable skill. It was mesmerizing to watch. The dish was even more amazing.
The show is called Chuuka Ichiban, or Cooking Master Boy. It is set in ancient China, where the country was in disarray due to the emperor falling ill. It then set the stage for what was known to be the “Era of the Cooking Wars.” Mao, the main protagonist, also traveled all over China as a super chef and collected magical cooking utensils to fight evil chefs who seek to control the country. It sounds so overly dramatic. I didn’t care. It was so good. I loved every aspect of the show.
That led to the one fictional food that I would want to try in real life. We’ve all been there. we’ve seen a lot of foods in Disney movies, anime, fiction books, etc. We have the ever-famous Krabby patty from our favorite sponge, ambrosia in Greek mythology that was known to be the food for the gods, and every food in Miyazaki’s films. I am sure I would want to try any of those foods, but the golden laughing bun from Chuuka Ichiban would take the cake.
In one of the episodes, Shell, one of the party members of Mao, was a dim sum master. He would use his staff to make some amazing dim sum. Whether beating the crap out of the flour or using it as a pin roller, it was all fair game for him.
He had then had to battle one of the chefs from the dark world or something like that. These chefs would cook killer dishes that could be deadly at times. Shell then made one of the most unique dim sum dishes that caught my eye. We know, in the world of anime, a lot of outrageous things can happen. He made this golden bun that was laughing! It looked super bright, and its laugh was creepy in a way, but it made me want to try it!
It had the typical ingredients that you would see in a meat bun like chunks of beef, chopped vegetables, etc. What made it laugh, according to anime logic, was that it had vermicelli noodles inside with the other main ingredients, then it was deep fried while the bun had a crescent cut resembling a mouth so that the oil could seep in. It baffled and amazed me at the same time.
Given that there were a lot of good dishes in the show, dim sum creations such as this struck a chord for me. Dim sum has always a special place in my heart (I’ll discuss it in an article soon), and maybe despite all types of fictional foods out there, this laughing bun had stuck with me the most.
