Food is a huge part of most anime and manga series, and while One Piece isn’t exactly a cooking show, it sure has some of the most badass chefs ever.
Being a pirate cook isn’t easy – they gotta prepare meals from scratch, using whatever raw ingredients are available at the time.
Apart from cooking food that’s edible, One Piece cooks must also cater to their crew’s ravenous appetites. And if they have the misfortune of serving a certain food-obsessed Emperor of the Sea, they also have to ensure their dishes are extravagant, unique, and the best-tasting every single time.
Here are the top 10 best cooks in One Piece, ranked!
10Carne and Patty
Carne and Patty are 2 of the main cooks at the Baratie, which is the ocean-restaurant owned by Zeff, located in East Blue.
They joined Zeff after being chased out of other restaurants for their violent behavior, and became the first employees of the restaurant. Baratie is the perfect place for these “damn cooks”, who can cook food in their own way without fear of being fired. They developed a strong rivalry with Sanji, Zeff’s protege.
Carne is the restaurant’s official charcuterie, specializing in all meat-based dishes. Patty, on the other hand, is the pâtissier, and is also skilled with knives, being able to cut up huge fish into thin slices within seconds.
9Wanze
A lot of people find Wanze’s technique of preparing his food quite distasteful –with good reason. Dude ingests flour and kneads the dough with his tongue, using his nose-hair to cut it into noodles, which he then blows out his nose.
Hey, if you’re hired by the World Government’s Cipher Pol, you probably have to find unique ways to prepare your ramen.
Additionally, Wanze can use ramen to make a battle suit using a martial art style called Ramen Kenpo, and can also use sharpened noodles to attack his enemies.
Sanji might find him unworthy of being a true chef, but Wanze has style. A disgusting one, no doubt.
8Hatchan
Hatchi was part of the despicable Arlong Pirates but escaped to become a Takoyaki food expert. He got his own cover story, called Hatchan’s Sea Floor Stroll, through which he opened his own floating restaurant called Takoyaki 8.
Since he’s an octopus, he uses his 6 arms to cook Takoyaki with such speed and technique that he impresses even Sanji. He also roasted a whole pig for the Sea Cow Momoo, showing his culinary skill.
7Charlotte Lola and Charlotte Chiffon
These twin sisters come from Whole Cake Island, born to Pound and Charlotte Linlin. Don’t miss the cake references. Pound, Chiffon, and Lola are named after pound cake, chiffon cake, and roll cake respectively.
Lola is a chocolatier and the Minister of Chocolate, overseeing Cacao Island. Chiffon is the former Minister of Puff, specializing in – you guessed it – chiffon cakes.
Using the help of Whole Cake Island’s renowned 31 chefs, Chiffon baked a wedding cake using a secret recipe.
The cake was originally meant to be made by the head chef, Streusen, but Chiffon’s replacement cake turned out to be so light and fluffy that it could not only blow away the consumers, but quite literally blow away.
6Charlotte Pudding
Another one of Big Mom’s daughters, Pudding is also a chocolatier like Lola, and owns a café called Caramel on Cacao Island.
Pudding’s greater flex is her mind-erasing Devil Fruit and latent ability, as a hybrid Three Eye Tribe member – to decipher Poneglyphs. But her chocolate biscuits are irresistible to the likes of Luffy and Chopper, made with her own recipe of silky-smooth ganache and jam.
Pudding’s chocolate-making skills are supposed to be even more superior to Streusen.
5Carmen
Carmen is an anime-only character who debuted as the “gorgeous chef” in episode 51. It’s considered a filler episode, but she goes up against Sanji himself as his opponent in the culinary battle in Logue Town.
She is known to be flamboyant and overconfident, having defeated almost every famous chef in East Blue, except Zeff and Sanji.
She displays very fancy knife work and her dishes are aesthetically appealing. Although she loses the final competition, she promises Sanji that she will win next time.
4Panz Fry
Panz Fry is another anime-only character, a pirate-giant from Elbaf, and is Lily Enstomach, aka Lily the Glutton’s dad.
His reputation precedes him, as we see that Sanji already knows of his long legacy. Panz is kind of the Robin Hood of chefs.
He would attack the rich Marines and the loaded pirate ships to steal their food so he could feed the less fortunate. He is #4 on my list since as a chef, the one thing he can’t see is to see people starving.
His extraordinary cooking skills include literally barbequeing Sea King meat above an active volcano and spicing it up with special exotic volcanic salt and herbs.
He also sports a giant frying pan which he uses not only to make his famous paella that can feed a thousand people, but also as a weapon to whack his opponents.
3Streusen
Many of you might not know this, but the “Gourmet Knight” Streusen is the co-founder of the Big Mom Pirates along with Linlin herself. He serves her executive chef, and heads all the other cooks in the territory, including the WCI 31.
Streusen has over 60 years of cooking experience and is the unfortunate soul who has to see to all of Mama’s cravings. BM’s taste buds are extremely specific, and she demands flavors that only he can provide for her.
Streusen’s Paramecia-type Kuku Kuku no Mi Devil Fruit has the convenient ability to turn any object into food. He used it to transform the falling roof of the Whole Cake Chateau into a sponge cake, with icing.
2Zeff
Red Foot Zeff is Sanji’s cooking mentor and has taught him everything he knows. He is the head chef and owner of Baratie, and the former captain of the Cook Pirates.
By his own word, Zeff has cooked on all the seas in the world. He’s honestly been through a lot – chopped off his own leg and then ate it to stay alive when marooned on an island. He swore that he would open his own restaurant if he made it out alive – and he did!
Baratie is the best restaurant in East Blue, known to welcome all kind of customers and chefs, no matter how villainous. Zeff, of course, is the head chef, and handles all the other staff, overlooking all the cooking and presentation. Zeff’s proficiency, passion, and dedication makes him a true master chef.
1Vinsmoke Sanji
Sanji, chef of the Straw Hat Pirates, is the best cook in all of One Piece. He was able to recreate Big Mom’s wedding cake just by smelling it, in lesser 12 hours, when it took Streusen a whole week. It was so delicious, it gave BM, the food connoisseur, a foodgasm.
Sanji even managed to include hidden flavors in the recipe, which is a feat in itself. A strong sense of smell is his trump card as a chef.
He is the epitome of chef etiquette, trained by Zeff himself. He hates wasting food, and holds his position with great honor and pride.
Sanji traveled to the Kamabakka Kingdom and won the 99 recipes of Attack Cuisine – which is already 99 more recipes than Zeff knows. Attack Cuisine has an immediate effect on the body, improving strength, so it’s doubly effective for Sanji as a pirate-cook.
Sanji has also traveled to several other islands unlike Zeff, and has learned exotic cuisines, deepening his knowledge of nutrition as well as taste.
He has won numerous culinary competitions, beating hundreds of chefs, he was the sous-chef at Baratie, and can make mouth-watering dishes from leftover scraps, as Luffy can attest. One day, Sanji will fulfil his dream of finding the All Blue and become a better chef than he already is.
About One Piece
One Piece is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Eiichiro Oda. It has been serialized in Shueisha’s Weekly Shōnen Jump magazine since July 22, 1997.
The man who had acquired everything in this world, the Pirate King, is Gol D. Roger. The final words he said at the execution tower were “My treasures? If you want it, I’ll let you have it. Look for it; I left all of it at that place.” These words sent many to the seas, chasing their dreams, headed toward the Grand Line, in search of One Piece. Thus began a new age!
Seeking to be the greatest pirate in the world, young Monkey D. Luffy also heads toward the Grand Line in search of One Piece. His diverse crew is joining him along the way, consisting of a swordsman, marksman, navigator, cook, doctor, archaeologist, and cyborg-shipwright, this will be one memorable adventure.
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