One Piece: Grand Gourmet Review: Kairosoft Cooks for the Straw Hats

Kairosoft has been making the same game for fifteen years, and I mean that mostly as a compliment. Tiny pixel people, a grid to fill, numbers that go up, and that "one more year" pull that eats an evening. One Piece: Grand Gourmet, published by Bandai Namco and out since 23 October 2026 on Switch, Switch 2, PC (Steam), iOS and Android, puts that formula on a ship and hands the kitchen to Sanji.

What you actually do

You run a floating restaurant. Sanji cooks, the rest of the Straw Hats wait tables, and you lay out tables, decorations and attractions to pull in customers. Guests come with requests - build this, put that dish on the menu - and fulfilling them turns them into fans who sail on with you. Each region has goals (fans, sales, requests) plus a rival crew of fake Straw Hats to beat before you move on to the next sea.

The crew is cleverly woven into the systems rather than just pasted on as portraits. Robin levels up dishes with ingredients, Zoro's gym trains your staff, Nami runs a shop for ingredients and customer gifts, Franky builds ship decorations and Usopp's factory makes table dressing. Familiar faces like Hachi and Buggy show up running stalls or performing on a stage you build. For a fan, that steady drip of cameos is the main course.

The highs

The menu system is the best part. You combine dishes into set menus, set the price and chase chain bonuses that boost the berries each customer drops. Fiddling with combos and comfort levels of tables is classic Kairosoft min-maxing, and it scratches the itch. The pixel art is charming, the pace is relaxed and it is a perfect handheld or commute game. At $19.99 (19.99 euros on the European eShop and Steam) it is also priced fairly for what it is.

The lows

Cooking is a single button press. There is no kitchen minigame, no timing, nothing you physically do with the food - in a game themed around a chef, that feels like a missed opportunity. Much of the mid-game is waiting for numbers to tick over, and if you have played Cafeteria Nipponica or Pocket Harvest you will see every trick coming. Oddly, the opening has the opposite problem: as Multiplayer.it also pointed out, there is no game-speed setting, so the first hours rush past before you have properly settled in. On the technical side, the game is locked to 30fps on every platform, PC included - not an issue for a pixel management sim, but worth knowing.

Who it's for

One Piece fans who want a gentle, long-tail management game with their favourite crew, and Kairosoft regulars who simply want more of the same in a new costume. If you need active, hands-on gameplay or have no attachment to the license, this will feel like watching a spreadsheet eat sushi.

Verdict

Grand Gourmet is a warm, competent Kairosoft game with real affection for Oda's world and smart use of the crew in its systems. It is also the safest possible version of that idea. Fun, cosy, a bit too passive.

Score: 7/10

Image: Ferfive / CC BY 4.0, source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Straw_Hat_Pirates%27_Jolly_Roger.jpg