Nobunaga No Chef (J-Drama) – Review (2025)

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PUBLISHED ON: May 22nd 2021

Today I bring you another J-drama review! This time it’s about Nobunaga No Chef, which came out in Japan in 2013; I found out about it because I really like the actor who plays Oda Nobunaga, Oikawa Mitsuhiro, and I was looking through his filmography when, suddenly, I saw this series’ name. It looked unusual and interesting, so I started watching it (it also appears to have a sequel, although I haven’t watched it yet); since I absolutely loved this drama, I guess I’ll now review it here!

Ken (Tamamori Yuta) is a chef in an elegant restaurant in modern-day Japan, and he’s immensely skilled at cooking complicated dishes. One day he is thrown back in time to the Sengoku era with no memories of his past self other than his cooking skills and the image in his head of a woman complimenting a dish that he made; he is then helped by a girl called Natsu (Shida Mirai), who finds him a bit weird but still decides to help him (imagine you live in ancient Japan and you meet a weirdo who tells you he comes from the future, before people even read sci-fi novels). At one point they encounter Oda Nobunaga (Oikawa Mitsuhiro), who, despite what one might expect, is impressed by his cooking skills and decides to hire him as his new personal cook; Ken will have to feed Nobunaga’s family and army, and win many culinary battles, whilst finding a way to regain his memories and go back to the present era, hoping Nobunaga doesn’t kill him first. Isn’t Nobunaga going to die relatively soon, though? Ken will have to do something about it as well.

The music in this show isn’t anything special, however, the opening and ending themes are quite good; the opening is called 戦国のキュイジーヌ Sengoku no kyuijīnu, which means Sengoku Cuisine.

On the other hand, the ending is called My Resistance, and it’s by a band called Kis-My-Ft.2. (yes, I know, I did read the name, and no, nothing I can do about it); the nice thing about it is that the actor who plays Ken, Tamamori Yuta, is actually in this band, and he sings the song, which makes the song feel even more special.

Ken

Ken is the protagonist of the show. As he’s an incredible cook, he’s able to make use of the scarce ingredients he has in the Sengoku era to make any dish he can imagine, and he has the impressive mnemonic skills to remember any recipe he has seen in the present age. He owns a “weapon”, his cooking knife, made by his friend Natsu. He has lost his memory, only remembering the face and voice of a woman complimenting a dish he had cooked for her. Not only that, but he is brave and knowledgeable, and can put others’ feelings in the food he makes, in order to convey certain feelings and win his “battles”.

Oda Nobunaga

Oda Nobunaga is literally Oda Nobunaga; he’s a famous warlord from the Sengoku era (Warring States). In this show, he decides to fight some battles with cuisine rather than with weapons; he’s somewhat flashier and quirkier than his other incarnations, especially thanks to the actor, Oikawa Mitsuhiro. As a result, this makes his behavior in this show quite fun to watch.

Natsu

Natsu is a woman who disguises herself as a boy to be a blacksmith. She finds Ken just after he is thrown back in time, and starts to help him out in cooking; she also crafts a knife for him to use. Furthermore, she supports Ken all throughout the show.

I immensely enjoyed this show, as I got to learn the existence of new fancy dishes, and it made me intrigued by the character of Oda Nobunaga too. It was also extremely fun and engaging, and managed to put historical events in an unusual way. There’s also a manga about it, however, I haven’t seen it in English yet; luckily, you can always watch these two seasons again.

Overall: 9.5/10
Story: 9.5/10
Acting/Cast: 9.5/10
Music: 7.5/10
Rewatch Value: 9.0/10

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