Tetsunabe no Jan
Iron Wok Jan!

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The first time I saw a volume of this was in 2007, doing work experience as a middle-schooler. A sumo wrestler passed out after eating a durian, and the protagonist squeezed a living frog over him, reviving him with the frog juice. Seventeen years later I went back and read the whole thing. I'll make a simple list-based review, but if you want to read a cooking manga or even just a battle manga, go for it!

Good:
- the food looks delicious, is credible, and clearly based on a thorough consultation
- there aren't any shonen superpower gimmicks where a chef uses random weapons to cook
- the ... characters all have great individuality through their speech, mannerisms and cooking styles. No skimpy costumes or stock characters
- there's a part where Soma and another chef poison eachother with extreme doses of spice, and they both lie on the ground, laughing while sweating buckets and shivering
- there's a lot of attention paid to regional Chinese cuisines and individual taste, like the scene in Tampopo where she's taught to read customer's faces and body language before cooking

Bad:
- all the female characters have enormous breasts for no good reason. It's completely non-erotic, and they ARE covered up appropriately, but it just reeks "someone thought this was good, and they didn't consult with anyone else"
- the main character is quite hard to like, but very enjoyable most of the time. It's clear why his monstrous training from an early age made him such a piece of work, and you DO believe in his motivations, more or less

Strange:
- like Urasawa Naoki the author can draw white people, specifically French people, eerily accurate, but in a way that makes them look quite grotesque compared to the Asian characters. I don't hate it, but it's a very strange choice

How far could you go when making a anti-hero for a cooking manga. Iron-wok Jan tests this by having the most likeable, unlikeable devil like little character as the MC and honestly if you can get down with unlikable characters and are bored of generic MCs then I think you will have a blast of this manga. In terms of cooking, Iron-wok Jan focuses on traditional Chinese cooking while focusing and pushing the envelop with more out there ingredients like eating brain. The food is depicted simply but always tasty looking especially the normal recipes and is up there with Shokugeki with getting you hungry. ... On top of that other main 'normal' lead is a fun headstrong female character who gets you to root for them almost as much as the MC. Honestly I find Shokugeki in retrospect takes a lot of notes from this manga while taming and toning down lots of its more spicier aspects. Lots more here of main 'evil' characters taking cooking at Yu-gi-oh be all end all aspects and honestly it helps have the manga semi-serious tone hold a lot better then say Shokugeki's final arc. Overall if your looking more cooking manga and want one where characters are on Full-blast with interesting Head-to-head and tournament like cooking challenges then this is exactly the manga for you (plus its full translated) so have fun. P.S please god someone translate the sequels I want more after that ending. And if anybody doesn't initially like the MC just know that his cockiness gets much more 'funnier?' as the manga goes on, when you realize that he's just talking out of his ass and hoping his skills can make up with improvising it makes a lot of the scenes so much funnier.