Manga Review: Delicious in Dungeon 1 by Ryoko Kui
It is said that “an army marches on its stomach.” Logistics are important to adventurers too, as this party just learned the hard way. They’d lost their food supplies while in the dungeon, so when a red dragon popped up, they were suffering the effects of starvation and not at top performance. As a result, one of the party members was swallowed, and the rest of the party had to be teleported out without most of their equipment by a passing stranger.
Two of the party members immediately quit to look for better prospects. This leaves the remaining crew, Laios the human warrior, Marcille the elvish spellcaster, and Chilchuk the half-foot rogue with a tough decision. They need to find that red dragon and get Laios’ sister Falin back within a month before she’s fully digested, but they don’t have enough money to buy sufficient supplies or hire new party members (who would still need supplies.) Laios has an idea. They can cut down on food costs by scavenging edible monster parts in the dungeon.
Their first effort is…less than ideal, but them even trying attracts the attention of dwarven foodie Senshi (his title, rather than his name, it means “seeker”). He’s a veteran at cooking monsters, and offers to assist the party in survival skills in exchange for getting to cook the dragon once it’s found.
This manga’s Japanese title is roughly “Dungeon Meshi” so a direct translation would be more like “Dungeon Meals.” I’m good with the more fanciful title. The setting of D&D-like fantasy is mostly just there to support the fanciful ideas about cooking and eating monsters of various types. Death is cheap in this setting, thanks to revival spells, so it’s treated as more of an inconvenience than a tragedy and the tone is light-hearted.
Each chapter focuses on a different cooking adventure as the characters delve deeper into the dungeon. Oh, I should mention that this particular labyrinth allegedly is built on top of a golden city that was buried by an angry mage centuries ago, and his magic is how monsters keep spawning and traps reset. No one’s ever made it all the way down to the city.
Laios turns out to be something of a monster nerd, learning all he can about the way they work–he’s long had an interest in eating monsters to find out what they taste like. Marcille is the least enthusiastic about dungeon cuisine; apparently she’s a city elf who’s never had to kill her own food before, and objects to eating ugly stuff. She’s also the most likely to be inconvenienced during their hunting, and in these early chapters her magic isn’t much help. Chilchuk’s normally laid-back but is protective of his role as party lockpick and trap-finder, so gets angry when other people infringe on that.
Senshi’s a bit of a mystery. He’s been exploring the dungeon for years, possibly having come in from another entrance before the one the other characters know about opened. It’s not clear if he survived solo all this time, or just lost the rest of his party. He’s a huge asset for dungeon survival, but monomaniacal on the subject of cooking.
Various monsters, like basilisks and living armor, are reimagined as potential food sources. You’re on your own for trying to recreate the recipes in the real world, though.
The art clearly delineates the characters, making it easy to remember who’s who, and is generally good. There are omake that allow for extra jokes or bits of worldbuilding,
I am given to understand there’s a deeper story later on, so if you are a foodie who enjoys fantasy stories, this is the series for you. Oh, and there’s also an anime if you prefer that medium.
