On paper, Welcome to the Outcast's Restaurant! has everything I should like: a cozy restaurant, a fantasy environment, some cute character designs, and a few dashes of slice of life. It's a recipe that could have worked, had someone in the kitchen not made the grave error of adding a spoonful of “banished from the party” that ruins the flavor here. Beyond just the anime's story and characters, the food doesn't even look good.

The story starts with Dennis' party, the famed Silver Wing, fighting a dragon. Just as the battle is escalating, the OP cuts in to interrupt things. The next thing we know, Dennis is at his group's meeting relaying the final moments of the battle that were skimmed over, just so Dennis can get banished right from the get-go. Cast out with nothing left to lose, Dennis starts up his own restaurant with a group of other outcasts: the young slave girl Atelier, the yellow-haired warrior Henrietta, the overworked Bachel, and the gender-bending adventurer Vivia.

Now, “banished from the party” stories are old hat by now, but that doesn't mean you can't squeeze something out of them. I would imagine that there exists some potential when the person banished is an amazing cook instead of your typical warrior, healer, or the weakest runt of the litter. And I do like the restaurant idea too. Having people come from being cast away from their former colleagues to start a new life in the service biz could have been a decent mix of fun dungeon crawling and restaurant hijinks. Maybe it could have been like a Cheers-type show where everyone gets together to make great food after surviving a grueling day of monster slaying and social abandonment. The show instead chooses to go the route typical of banished party and power fantasy stories. Our leading man, Dennis, is a stoic yet capable man who proves himself more powerful and kind than his former mates. It's as one-dimensional as it gets.

The first batch of episodes has Dennis meeting these outcasts one by one, and on a few occasions, he saves them during their dungeon crawls. You can already feel the story adding unnecessary spice by throwing in a slavery plotline via Atelier early on, and if that weren't enough for you, Outcast's Restaurant decides to up the ante by having the yellow-haired Henrietta become the victim of violent sexual assault. Dennis's former party leader, Vigo, is shown to be cruel towards small animals and people, too. It's all the same Goblin Slayer-esque edgelordery that's supposed to make the audience think the show has some spine, and of course it doesn't, and of course none of the characters really develop into anything meaningful afterwards. By the time Outcast's Restaurant's big climax rears its head during its final episodes, Dennis' group of girls linger in the background to root him on with the emptiest “power of friendship” moment I've seen in a while.

We get some glimpses of restaurant life, though they never feel as in-depth as they could be. Around the middle of the series, Dennis and the gang's Outcast Restaurant starts becoming more popular with the locals, although the anime is hesitant to show how they got more patrons. Did word about the restaurant spread like wildfire? Was there an advertising campaign? Did anybody go to the market to hand out free samples? I feel like a lot could have been made on how Dennis's group of outcasts boosted their restaurant's popularity, but it all goes to waste.

Still, not all of Outcast's Restaurant is lifeless. The teeniest dashes of slice of life do make their way through every once in a while, and some drama involving arson and book-burning bursts midway through to add some intrigue. Again, this doesn't add much when you've got a clichéd plotline and characters. It also doesn't help things when things are marred by unnecessary flashbacks and the same style of flat animation you'd come to expect in a series like this.

I am fully aware of the score I'm giving it, but let me tell you something: this is a case of “I'm not mad, I'm disappointed.” I can't be mad that it's not a masterpiece or even that great--when you've got a summer season filled with such heat like DAN DA DAN and Panty & Stocking, everything else feels dwarfed by comparison.

Still, I'm disappointed that its ingredients didn't come together the way I'd like them to. I'm disappointed that the characters' arcs were so painfully straightforward yet so unfun. I'm disappointed that nothing here pulls any punches and ends with an unsurprising and dull climax. And as someone whose fall back into the hip-hop rabbit hole had him reading the title as “Welcome to the OutKast's Restaurant,” I was very, very, VERY disappointed when the main squad didn't christen their group “the Dungeon Family” (seriously, that was a missed opportunity, especially considering how the first few episodes include dungeons). The best thing this anime has to offer is that it goes down the hatch very quickly. Which is great considering the aftertaste is rather bland.