Isekai Izakaya Nobu: Japanese Food from Another World

 This is an anime I started watching because a) it's very food oriented, b) the episodes are 15 minutes long, so good if you don't have a lot of time. 

This one is very, very light. Basically, there's a restaurant -- Izakaya Nobu -- and it's a normal place...except that the front door opens into another world called Atheria. It seems to be a fairly medieval / Germanic place where they eat a lot of potato and have bad water you have to boil to be able to drink it. There's a castle and palace guards and glass is a rarity. Meanwhile, the Izakaya is modern day-ish with all the regular amenities that come with that -- running water, being able to pop out their back door and go shopping, serving ale chilled in glass.

So, cue lots of pure joy as the various denizens of the parallel world experience Japanese food for the first time and learn how to use chopsticks. It's all very pure.

At the end of each show, there's also a bonus "Nobu Plus" where you get either a young chef that shows you how to make a variation of one of the dishes in the show or an older performer guy who tours restaurants and eats the dishes in the real world. As they even give out the addresses of the places, it all feels very like it is put together by the Japan Tourist Board. It might be, honestly. 

And I'm okay with that. It's just a frothy bit of foodie fun and hey, if I ever go to Tokyo or wherever, I'd look up some of those restaurants. :-) 

There is, actually, a fair amount of character development too, though literally NO questions are answered about the how/why there's this parallel world connection. A lot of the story is around a couple of palace guards named Nicolas and Hans. But, really, you're watching this one for the food. Everything else is secondary. :-) I'm about 5 or 6 episodes in (maybe 7?) and it's just a happy-making little show that makes you hungry.

Edit: I finished the Flower Boy Next Door, so I'm back to this one now. I'm around episode 15? Still enjoying it--though sometimes I wish they'd switch up the Nobu Plus thing so I can get some of the other recipes! 

Edit: I finished it! It was charming throughout and a great light (yummy) show to watch. I'd watch it again even, maybe with little dude. There's not masses of plot or development, but it's a sweet show.