History Manga / ChuukaIchiban

* DarkChick / DragonLady: Shan An. Turns out to be also MsFanservice after removing her cloak.

* ExcitedShowTitle

* ArtisticLicenseGeography: Mao's "Sea Bream Continental Seal" is 4 dishes made in the shape of China.
So far so good, except it was shaped like the modern People's Republic of China rather than the Qing Empire which was still in power at the time the story is set.

* ReactionShot: The other big draw of the series. The {{Anime}} watered them down significantly [[UpToEleven which says something about the comic given the final result]].

* KnifeNut: Leon wields the Seven Star knives, a set of seven kitchen knives made by the blacksmith Lu Xie.

* ArtShift: Particularly prominent in the manga. Mao and Shirou are usually given simple, comedic face designs that correspond to their age but become {{Bishonen}} during moments of drama or romance.

%%* {{Bishonen}}: Lan Fei Wong. Also Known as Fei. Yeah, Fei.
%%** Several named characters were drawn this way. Chou Yu, Karao, Yi-Gu, Lei, to name a few.

* YouGottaHaveBlueHair: Although downplayed in the manga due to its monochromatic coloring, this is more obvious in the anime:
** Mao and Leon, particularly as the latter has silver-colored hairs.
** Master Chou Yu has ''green'' hair, but it doesn't come far from being black.
** Shell... a blond ''Chinese'' man. Probably justified since he is a nomad.

The original manga by Etsushi Ogawa was serialized from 1995 to 1999 in ''[[Maagazine/ShonenMagazine Weekly Shonen Magazine]]''. The first anime adaptation ran from April 1997 to September 1998, concluding at 52 episodes. A continuation, ''Shin Chūka Ichiban!'' debuted in October 2019, and looks to cover content that wasn't adapted in the first anime while being a more faithful adaptation to the manga. There is also a sequel of the original manga with the name ''Chūka Ichiban! Kiwami'' (which started its serialization in 2017), where the sequel now sends off Mao once again on a journey to find the truth behind the disappearance of his [[DisappearedDad father]] since his childhood while dealing with new threats to the Chinese society.

The first anime adaptation ran from April 1997 to September 1998, concluding at 52 episodes. A continuation, ''Shin Chūka Ichiban!'' debuted in October 2019, and looks to cover content that wasn't adapted in the first anime while being a more faithful adaptation to the manga. There is also a sequel of the original manga with the name ''Chūka Ichiban! Kiwami'' (which started its serialization in 2017), where the sequel now sends off Mao once again on a journey to find the truth behind the disappearance of his [[DisappearedDad father]] since his childhood while dealing with new threats to the Chinese society.

* {{Bishonen}}: Lan Fei Wong. Also Known as Fei. Yeah, [[SoGoodWeMentionedItTwice Fei]].
** Several named characters were drawn this way. Chou Yu, Karao, Yi-Gu, Lei, to name a few.

The first anime adaptation ran from April 1997 to September 1998, concluding at 52 episodes. A continuation, ''Shin Chūka Ichiban!'' debuted in October 2019, and looks to cover content that wasn't adapted in the first anime while being a more faithful adaptation to the manga.

* BrilliantButLazy: Mao spends a good portion of the show admiring the cooking of his rivals and tasting their food, rather than cooking.

After passing the gruelling and highly competitive Supreme Master Chef examinations, Mao gets qualified for the title and decides to travel across China in order to improve his cooking skills more. However, things take a dark turn as the Underground Cooking Society, an evil organization trying to take control of China through culinary proficiency, begins a search for seven magical cooking items. Now Mao has to get the items first before the society lays a hand on them and eventually use them to control China.

* ActuallyIAmHim: To avoid unwanted publicity, Mao covered his Supreme Master Chef's seal with a white cloth and only reveals it when somebody asks him whom he really is. The people just realized that ''they just met the youngest Supreme Master Chef in China''.
* AFateWorseThanDeath: An Underground Cooking Society chef who loses are never allowed to cook again since cooking is SeriousBusiness for some of them.

* {{BFS}}: Master Ruoh possesses a "knife" that can split a cow in half ''with a single swing'', which he demonstrates to the main characters. He actually needs to focus his internal strength before using it.

* CheatersNeverProsper: In some occasion, few of Mao's opponent resorted in heinous ways.
** Che Lin, the '''"Ryuuri Witch"''', snuck a nerve-numbing needle behind Mao's ears to paralyze his tasting buds during the Supreme Chef second trial. [[spoiler: She also puts on a heft amount of poppy flower additives, which is forbidden, into her mock noodle dish that the ones who consumes it may become addicted to it, but wasn't enough to trick both Mao and Fei in the end]]. The reaction after her cheating is discovered is as expected.

** The Dumpling Brothers, to an extent. They put Chou Yu into submission few days prior the Guangzhou Dumpling Contest, sabotaged a competing restaurant into throttling them to gain a lead and pressuring their competitor by 'failing' the customer's faith and secretly sabotaging the soup for Mao's dumpling. IT was revealed that Al, the little brother of the bunch secretly sabotaging the competition and was going to do so for the upcoming rematch, but was exposed by Chou Yu who managed to corner him before he escapes.

** Leon. He's wearing a dark, mostly pale rugged outfit, fit himself with seven sinister-looking knives, and is associated with the Underground Cooking Society and thus learned most of their techniques, but he's ultimately a good guy.

* EmbarrassingTattoo: Leon's hand was tattooed with the Underground Cooking Society symbol when he joined. After his redemption, he [[GoodScarsEvilScars crossed out]] the tattoo to show his disassociation from the Society.

* FoodPorn: ''Chūka Ichiban!'' doesn't just take liberties around overly extravagant garnishing, They even give them extremely impossible characteristics. Majority of those cases, however, are explained by science. Examples include:

** On one episode, When Mao and company stayed at a house of a rich jade merchant where the chef was slowly poisoning them with addictive Red Mushrooms, Mao made them a "Rainbow Rice Porridge" to wean them from the addiction.
** This is central to Mao's battle against Fei in the Forbidden City. He, Shell and Leon agreed that they create their dishes in such a way that they can introduce the Emperor of China to healthy eating habits.

* [[MadScientistsBeautifulDaughter Master Chef's Beautiful Daughter]]: Mei Li is the only daughter of Master Chou Yu, the deputy head chef of Yang Spring Restaurant and ''Mao's teacher''.
* MagicAntidote: The Masked chef promises Mao that he would give the antidote to the earlier poisonous frog poison should Mao win. Oddly enough said antidote works for Chou you as well, even though Chou yu was stung by a scorpion rather than eating the poisonous frog. Not only that, the victims doesn't seem to suffer any ill-effects from their earlier poisoning either and recover almost instantly once given the antidote.

* NoEnding: The anime finished airing when the manga still running on September 1998, thus the anime ends just after the Peking showdown.
* OneDoseFitsAll: The masked chef's poison works like this. It somehow affecting all his targets equally despite the differences in body builds and amount of poison consumed. It takes effect almost simultaneously as well.
* OnlyTheChosenMayWield: The legendary utensils will only be used by worthy successors. And its successors aren't just one person, as Leon is also capable of summoning the utensils' powers other than Mao.

* SecretTestOfCharacter: The second round of the Supreme Master Chef Examinations involved a "peer assessment," in which the competitors will judge the dishes of their opponents instead of being graded by an impartial judge. [[spoiler: Apparently, a good chef must be able to look past prejudices and recognize quality food regardless of whether it was cooked by an opponent (and thus may lessen the chances of said competitor to win the competition).]]

* SortingAlgorithmOfEvil: Early in the series Mao starts out by facing independent enemies of varying levels. Once he becomes a Supreme Chef he starts fighting against dark chefs who are more skilled and brutal. Then he fights against the underground's top chefs, the Five Tigers. Oddly enough {{Averted}} early on, as Mao's first opponent Shou an was already an accomplished Supreme Chef while Mao was still a newbie.

* WalkingTheEarth: And Mao does, all through China, to try to pick up dishes around the nation.

* WickedCultured: Whereas lower-ranking members of the Underground Cooking Society looks more like ruffians with some additional abilities in cooking, the society's higher-ranking members are somewhat more personable and cultured than their underlings. This is emphasized during Mao's battle with Alkan, where the latter mentions the sayings of [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mencius Mencius]] to discuss the nature of their duel's result.

* ValuesDissonance: The governors of some regions the protagonists travel through have shut down restaurants or even execute the chefs whose offerings they find unsatisfactory, even though it's caused by the governors' own medical condition. They also rarely show remorse for their actions after Mao sets them straight with his own cooking.

* TheStoic: Leon

* YouGottaHaveBlueHair
** Mao and Leon.

''Chūka Ichiban!'' (meaning "''China's Number One''") is a manga and anime (the latter known as ''Cooking Master Boy'' in anglophone countries) about a Chinese boy named Liu Mao Xing, who aspires to be a great chef like his mother. The story is set in a fictional Imperial China where cooking is [[SeriousBusiness taken seriously]]. It is entirely possible to be ''banned'' from cooking just by losing a competition, even if your dish was of adequate quality. Chefs of varying degrees of proficiency are recognized and awarded by the Empire, and the most coveted title of all, the Supreme Master Chef title, is Mao's penultimate goal.

After passing the grueling and highly competitive Supreme Master Chef examinations, Mao gets qualified for the title and decides to travel China in order to improve his cooking skills more. However, things take a dark turn as the Underground Cooking Society, an evil organization trying to take control of China through culinary proficiency, begins a search for seven magical cooking items. Now Mao has to get the items first before the society lays a hand on them and eventually use them to control China.

* AFateWorseThanDeath: An Underground Cooking Society chef who lose are never allowed to cook again since cooking is SeriousBusiness for some of them.

* BookEnds: Mao and Shou An's rivalry started with the former defeating the latter in a cooking match with tofu as the main ingredient. They settled the score one and for all using tofu again as the main ingredient.

** The Dumpling Brothers, to an extent. They put Chou Yu into submission few days prior the Guangzhou Dumpling Contest, sabotaged a competing restaurant into throttling them to gain a lead and pressuring their competitor by 'failing' the customer's faith, and secretly sabotaging the soup for Mao's dumpling. IT was revealed that Al, the little brother of the bunch secretly sabotaging the competition and was going to do so for the upcoming rematch, but was exposed by Chou Yu who managed to corner him before he escapes.

* DaddyIssues: Sanche had a hard time training with his father as a cook, as his methods are very strict and borderline abusive. During a practice, he cut his own hand which made his father upset.

** Leon. He's wearing a dark, mostly pale rugged outfit, fit himself with seven sinister looking knives, and is associated with the Underground Cooking Society and thus learned most of their techniques, but he's ultimately a good guy.
* DistaffCounterpart: Shan An for Leon. She shares his seven star knives, and both of them specialize in seafood, and use CleanCut techniques.

* EmbarrassingTattoo: Leon's hand was tattooed with the Underground Cooking Society symbol when he joined. After his redemption, he [[GoodScarsEvilScars crossed out]] the tattoo to show his disassociation from the the Society.

* InfractionDistraction: A female Underground Cooking Society chef does this to a group of Shanghai judges by trying to seduce them [[spoiler:in order to hide she is spiking her food so when they next taste her competitor's food, it would taste horrible.]]
* InsaneTrollLogic: Some of Mao's dishes appear to involve copious amounts of this. For instance, for a noodle making test, he starts smashing rocks, boils them in water, then cooks grain in the pan, only to not add ''any'' water to the dough. [[spoiler: Instead, he uses lye water extracted from the "rock" to make incredibly stretchy and strong noodles.]]

* LateToTheTragedy: The setup of the first episode. Mao is out picking mushrooms, and wants to show the rare herbs he's found. He opens the door to find the place ransacked by thugs, and everyone beat up.

* OnlyTheChosenMayWield: The legendary utensils will only be used by worthy successors.
* OppositesAttractRevenge: Chou Yu and [[spoiler:Li Hua]], who had their ultimate falling out when they competed for the hand of [[spoiler:Mei Ga, Mei Li's mother]]. Only shown in a flashback, but their hatred moved on to sixteen years.

* PleaseDontLeaveMe: Mei Li to Mao when he decided to travel China to home his cooking skills. When Mao read Mei Li's farewell letter, he is, of course, anguished, but it turns out that Mei Li snucked in the boat to accompany Mao on his quest.

** Shou An after his final battle with Mao. [[spoiler:At least not before he hands Mao the missing half of his Mother's cookbook.]]
** The Masked Chef, [[spoiler: [=A.K.A.=] Lien]] from the underground society admits his defeat in the hands of Mao and thus gave the antidote as promised. [[spoiler:He's also poisoned himself with the vial he prepared as Mao's penalty for defeat, as he's learned the truth of his competition with Chou Yu sixteen years ago and realizes he cannot bear to live with the atrocities he committed in the society.]]
* SecretTestOfCharacter: The second round of the Supreme Master Chef Examinations involved a "peer assessment," in which the competitors will judge the dishes of their opponents instead of being graded by an impartial judge. [[spoiler:Apparently, a good chef must be able to look past prejudices and recognize quality food regardless of whether it was cooked by an opponent (and thus may lessen the chances of said competitor to win the competition).]]
* SelfFulfillingProphecy: In the Dumpling Brothers arc, one of the two brothers shoos away an old man wanting a second plate, saying "you'll drive away the customers!" The man turns out to be a reputable food critic and General Lee's predecessor, and does in fact do just that, by giving Mao's dish high praise.

* SupremeChef: Mao; Fei
* TheSyndicate: The Underground Cooking Society

* BadassGrandpa: Master Ruoh, the head chef of Yang Spring Restaurant in Guangzhou. He rarely cooks anymore due to his age, but he is not called the "Superman of Guangzhou Cuisine" ''for nothing''.

* RedemptionEqualsDeath: Shou An after his final battle with Mao. [[spoiler:At least not before he hands Mao the missing half of his Mother's cookbook.]]
** The Masked Chef, [[spoiler: [=A.K.A.=] Lien]] from the society admits his defeat in the hands of Mao and thus gave the antidote as promised [[spoiler:while proceed to drank the poison he presented for the loser of the duel and burns the mansion alongside him, not before learning the truth about his competition sixteen years prior and warned Chou Yu and Mao about the society and what they're after]].

The first anime adaptation ran from April 1997 to September 1998, concluding at 52 episodes. A continuation, ''Shin Chūka Ichiban!'' debuted in October 2019

* DaddyIssues: Sanche has a hard time training with his father as a cook.