After heroically sacrificing his life to save a child, twenty-five-year-old Koichi Suzuki is reincarnated as a young boy named Thor, born into a harsh, new world, thanks to a mysterious god dubbed “Indeed-Missy.” His reward? A unique magical ability that lets him cook up monsters.

Nothing comes easy in this cruel world, though. After nearly being sold off to slave traders by his scumbag parents, Thor finds himself orphaned and alone at the age of four, forced to scrape by using sheer grit and his newfound culinary skills. Just as survival feels within reach, he discovers two beastfolk girls on the verge of death. Helping them could spell his own ruin, but for a man who adored all things furry-eared in his past life, there's only one path forward.

“There's no way I'm abandoning beast ears!”

And so begins Thor's adventure of cooking his way through the dungeon!

The Accursed Chef and His Pair of Furry Foodies has story by Yuu Tanaka and illustrations by LLO. English translation is done by Ginshiro Kaneko. Published by J-Novel Club (September 29, 2025).

Lauren Orsini
Rating:

The declining birth rate in Japan must be worse than I realized. I don't think the author of The Accursed Chef and His Pair of Furry Foodies has ever seen a child. This book is about a trio of four-year-olds (they turn five around the 70% mark). It's no surprise that the chef, a reincarnated Japanese man in his 20s, doesn't act like a kid, but it's a different story for the catgirl and puppygirl he is “raising” (his words), who are both sexualized and crazy strong. Better to just turn your brain off for The Accursed Chef and His Pair of Furry Foodies, a forgettable escapist fantasy about living in the sewers and cooking poison monster stew, over and over again.

For no reason at all, I'm thinking about how great Delicious in Dungeon is. It was a story that made me reconsider why dungeons are the way they are beyond “that's just how it works in games,” inventing an entire biosphere that accounted for all of the diversity of flora and fauna found within. There's none of that here. Despite being reborn into a fantasy world of magic, main character Thor has zero curiosity “[T]he dungeon itself was a mystery, and I'd learned to accept things as they were.” After escaping his abusive parents and narrowly avoiding becoming dragon food, Thor escapes to the sewers where he meets and gives meat to two beastkin fugitives. And that's it. For the entire rest of the story, the trio level up by fighting low-level underground monsters (all poisonous) and make food out of their remains. This is because of Thor's handy cheat skills, which allow him to refrigerate food in his “storage” for years, use magic far beyond average abilities, and even use offensive magic because, you see, “Water Needle” is actually a cooking spell for piercing ingredients, yeah, sure. The beastkin, who ask Thor to name them (he creatively chooses Shiro and Kuro), obediently learn magic from him, eat his food, and don a little butler and maid outfit when they're not wearing lingerie. (Again, they are four years old. Not “actually 400 but look four.” They still wet the bed!) Let me guess, you were wondering whether they're wearing underwear and what kind? No problem, Thor brings it up multiple times.

Throughout this too-long book, I kept waiting for something to happen. Maybe Thor and the girls would escape the sewers. Maybe they would stop cooking gross poison soup and start cooking something more appetizing. It's not until the very last few pages that they all level up (though you can probably guess what happens given the “accursed” in the title and the illustrations, which all feature Shiro and Kuro with the eye-patch and magical dragon arm that they don't acquire until the last few pages)! I can tell that if this story gets an anime adaptation (and the isekai slop pile has no bottom, so I fully believe this could happen), this entire book would make up the first half of the first episode before moving on to more interesting content.