Otherworldly Sausage-Packed Pot Au Feu
S1 E1: My Absurd Skill is Unexpectedly Useful
Campfire Cooking in Another World, 2023
Like so many salarymen before him, Mukoda finds himself flung headfirst into an isekai fantasy realm—summoned by a half-sinister kingdom desperate for heroes and apparently unconcerned with vetting skillsets beforehand.
Among the summoned, there’s a wielder of sacred swords, a master of elemental magics, and then there’s Mukoda. His unique skill? Online Grocery. A phrase that would chill the bones of Instacart employees everywhere.
Naturally, he’s quickly discarded.
And so begins Campfire Cooking in Another World with My Absurd Skill, a series that dares to ask: what if Postmates had plot relevance?
What follows is a surprisingly delightful half hour in which Mukoda, our mild-mannered protagonist, cashes in his hush money and gets the hell out of dodge, preferring exile and convenience store cuisine to royal backstabbing and apocalyptic prophecy. Smart move.
Let’s talk about the Otherworldly Sausage-Packed Pot-Au-Feu.
Presented on-screen with a gleaming food title card that would not feel out of place in a Michelin-starred JRPG, this hearty stew becomes the moment the series truly arrives. Mukoda, having bartered his way into an escort quest with a ragtag band of C-rank adventurers, sets up a portable stove (modern, gas-powered, highly illegal in this world), slices his red boar meat (think fantasy pork), and begins a symphony of simmering. Carrots, cabbage (well, “cabbet”), potatoes, and sausage all take their places in the bubbling broth like soldiers preparing to be delicious.
The result? A stew so good, it literally increases stats. Strength up 20%. Magical power up 2%. This is not a meal—it is an edible buff. A consumable RPG item in casserole form. A bowl of body-enhancing, soul-soothing nourishment, accompanied by inexplicably soft white bread that leaves grown warriors weeping openly into their wooden bowls.
Let’s also note: this show goes hard on the food animation. It’s all here—glossy cuts, sizzling pans, steam that curls and dissipates like fine perfume. You can practically smell the soy-based ginger pork Mukoda whips up later, a dish so good it tames a god-level magical wolf, who immediately insists on a lifelong food contract. (Honestly, same.)
Now, is this show secretly a treatise on soft cultural colonialism, where Japanese convenience food is presented as inherently superior to rustic fantasy fare? Maybe. Possibly. Probably. But it’s also a deeply cozy, mildly absurd journey into the alchemy of cooking, where microwaveable stew holds more narrative power than a dozen flaming swords.
Mukoda himself is a bit of a blank slate—pleasant enough, a little dull, like a very polite rice cracker—but the food does the talking. And the talking sounds like, “Excuse me, your pot-au-feu just made me level up.”
A stew that can conquer monsters, raise stats, and win over ancient beings? That’s not a dish. That’s dinner diplomacy.