The basis of every story can start simple, but then grow over time. For She Loves to Cook, and She Loves to Eat, well, the title already gives it away! Nomoto is your typical office worker but with a fiery passion for cooking — she even shares the foods she makes on her Twitter. However, she dreams of making big portions of food she’s seen in video games and can feed an army. But naturally, she can’t eat a bunch of food and she doesn’t know anyone close enough to eat for her.
One day during the holidays though, she meets one of her neighbors, a tall woman carrying buckets of KFC SFC in the elevator, and due to being curious about it they strike up a conversation. Nomoto words things like the woman will be eating all of it with a group of friends — the woman, who we soon know as Kasuga, will be devouring all of it. Nomoto has found the person she could make big portions for, but they don’t know each other that well right? But after a rude conversation with one of her male co-workers, she buys sirloin and makes a lot of it.
And this begins the first real meeting between Nomoto and Kasuga, as Nomoto walks towards her neighbor’s apartment, asks if she’d be interested in nomming some food, and Kasuga says she will.
That is the basics of this manga, which means the developments surrounding the pair are what make this series interesting. Both, due to their appearance and gender expectations, have to put up with nonsense on the regular, and a comment by Kasuga to Nomoto later in the volume suggests there’s something serious going on within her family that doesn’t make her want to see them. It is a bit of happenstance that the two suddenly can meet up occasionally after formerly being strangers, but they find a way to connect in a way that works from them: Nomoto wants to make lots of food and have someone eat it, and Kasuga is able to eat a ton of it.
How the food is drawn is very appealing, but yes, prepare yourself to see large bites from Kasuga chowing down. Since it’s just those two for all of this volume you’ll have to come to terms with whether their personalities are entertaining, but I found the progression of pages, the humor, and their interactions to be good. After the initial introduction chapters, the two find ways to meet up and eat different types of food, whether it’s holding a potsticker party, Kasuga helping Nomoto during her period, or even a care package of food left on Kasuga’s door by Nomoto, and they were all good reads.
It’ll be interesting to see if it’ll maintain this type of storyline as the series goes on — it seems like the more the two get to know each other, the more they’ll learn about what’s going on with them personally. For now their current friendship, based on big eats and a calming presence, has been great to read, and I’m sure there are more foods to be cooked, so I’m interested in finding out what will appear in this manga next!