Comfort Food

A "Comfort Food" is a familiar food that a person eats because doing so relieves stress and anxiety and increases contentment and comfort (hence the name). It sparks happy memories, brings back feelings of security and safety, and thus can easily lift a person's mood.

Comfort food for most people tends to also be their favorite food, or the food they enjoyed the most while growing up. In his book A Cook's Tour, Celebrity Chef and Television Host Anthony Bourdain noted that, among big name chefs who specialize in fine cuisine at their restaurants, the most common type of answer to "If you were about to die and had time for one last meal, what would it be?" were meals like "my Grandmother's meat loaf" or "a nice hot ham-and-cheese sandwich" or "oreos and a tall glass of ice cold milk". Other common answers were things like "a Big Mac", "mint chocolate chip ice cream", "an entire bag of Lay's Barbecue chips", and "a chili dog".

Because corporations know a cash cow when they see it, there are entire restaurant chains devoted to serving you comfort food, like Bob Evans, Cracker Barrel, and Boston Market.

May overlap with Your Favorite. Heartbreak and Ice Cream is a common Sub-Trope. See also I Need a Freaking Drink and Drowning My Sorrows.

Examples of Comfort Food include:

Anime and Manga

One Pound Gospel: Kosaku starts pigging out after Sister Angela tells him that she can't spend any more time with him until he stops liking her as more than a friend.
Sorta used in Persona 4: The Animation when Aika offers the Rainy Day Special to Yu after Nanako's death. Yu is in such a depressed state that he actually eats it whole in few minutes. (Notice that this is a beef bowl that Yu and his friends have eaten before, and it's so... special that it's almost impossible to eat in less than 40 minutes.)
Angel in Angel Beats! goes for some Mapo Tofu (extremely spicy tofu dish) after being ousted from her position as Student Council President. But even that small pleasure ends up being inadvertently stolen from her by the SSS.
In Inukami! Youko's Trademark Favorite Food is Chocolate cake. Turns out her crush gave her some when he was much younger; he doesn't remember it, but this act of kindness when stuck on a mountain and surrounded by dogs, turned her into a Yandere for him.

Film

In Constantine, after a jaunt into Hell for information, Constantine declares he needs to eat. It's unclear if this is to cope with the trauma or because he had used up a lot of calories in his psychic journey, but in the film it seems to be a little of both.
In Iron Man, the first thing Tony Stark asks for when he gets back to the safety of American soil after being held hostage by the Five Rings is for a Burger King Whopper. Product Placement, sure, but it's also not so hard to imagine someone like Tony Stark thinking of a Whopper as comfort food.
- Tony's actual request is for "an American Cheeseburger," it is simply most likely , in universe, that the first opportunity to buy one was at BK. Not that it wasn't product placement for us.
In Gotcha, after Anthony Edwards manages to return to West Berlin after a rather traumatic trip to the East, the first thing he does is go to West Berlin's McDonald's and order "an American cheeseburger, some American fries, and a nice, thick, American milkshake."
Fat Bastard from Austin Powers lampshades one negative aspect of over-relying on Comfort Food:

"Of course I'm not happy! Look at me, I'm a big fat slob. I've got bigger titties than you do. I've got more chins than a Chinese phonebook. I've not seen my willie in two years, which is long enough to declare it legally dead. (on the verge of tears) I can't stop eating. I eat because I'm unhappy, and I'm unhappy because I eat. It's a vicious cycle."

- Keep in mind that his idea of Comfort Food includes human babies.
In Ratatouille, the title dish proves to be a Comfort Food for Anton Ego, as evidenced by the tears of joy and happy memories of his mother when he ate Remy's slightly fancied-up version. The experience was enough to cause a complete change of heart.
A Funny Background Event from The Incredibles 2, Violet (who is upset over breaking up with Tony) grabs a gallon-sized container of ice cream from the freezer while her father is talking on the phone, and then picks up a soup ladle to eat it with.

Literature

In one of the books in The Pendragon Adventure, Bobby appears in modern-day Stony Brook where his Muggle friends live, and they go to their local fast-food hangout for fries.
In Harry Potter, the standard treatment to recover from a Dementor attack is chocolate. (Some Truth in Television here; chocolate is known to have mood-elevating effects).
Isabel Allende on her books Paula and Aphrodite tells that after physicians confirmed to her that her daughter fell in a coma (from which she never got to wake up), her first impulse was to go to a nearby restaurant and ate several plates of Arroz con leche (the Spanish version of rice pudding) in an attempt to find comfort on anything. When she gave the recipe for the dish in Aphrodite, she named it (in the Spanish version) "Arroz con leche del consuelo espiritual" (lit. "rice pudding for spiritual comforting")

Live-Action TV

In Doctor Who, after the Doctor explains to Rose that he's the last of the Time Lords and what that actually means, they go out for chips. The chips help.
In Supernatural, when Castiel abandons his host body, we get to see said host body, Jimmy, chow down on cheeseburgers to the point of grossing Dean out.
In Parks and Recreation, cheesburgers are one of two known cures for Andy's 'shoe shine head' ailment.
In The Drew Carey Show episode "The High Road to China", Drew is stranded in China with no money and without his passport. He gets some money by working locally and upon arriving in Beijing, almost immediately goes to the McDonald's there. Unfortunately, he still hasn't got enough even for a Big Mac, prompting him to say "I never thought I'd use this in real life, but 'I will gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today.'".
It is mentioned in an episode of Babylon 5 that Michael Garibaldi eats like a starved man after experiencing serious personal tragedy, though only one early episode draws any particular attention to it. Worth noting that he is consistently depicted as being an excellent cook, particularly when it comes to Italian cuisine. He is also an alcoholic, so the food could also be a sort of Addiction Displacement.
Tater tots for Mercedes in Glee. Naturally, she is not happy when they are banned.
In Fraggle Rock, radish bars are Comfort Food to Red and Mokey Fraggle. They even sing a song about it!
Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
- Buffy's visit to Los Angeles after she's Back From the Dead must have been really intense - she brings back a Buffy-sized tub of chicken.
- In "Beauty and the Breasts", Buffy uses Jello and Willow uses donuts.
In the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Deja Q", Data tells the title character (who as punishment by his people, had to be human for one day) that ice cream is comfort food to humans. Q proceeds to order ten chocolate sundaes; he's in a really bad mood.

Video Games

Bad Dudes: After you rescue him from the captivity of ninjas, President Ronnie wants to go for a burger. You, however, do not get one.

Web Comics

In The Order of the Stick the Monster in the Darkness claims to have eaten all the mint thins from some girl scout cookies because.

Monster in the Darkness: "Sometimes I eat to fill the loneliness..."

According to Wapsi Square, pizza is the universal comfort food, even to the point where your demons won't bug you when you are eating it.

Web Original

Never get between an Agent of the Protectors of the Plot Continuum and his/her/other/its chocolate or alcohol.
The Nostalgia Chick stuffs herself with Subway and Dairy Queen when she's feeling depressed.
Team Kimba of the Whateley Universe and Chou's Moon Pies. The rest of the team has their own comfort foods (Lancer's is pork rinds), but Phase is appalled by all of them since he has the refined palate of a food critic.
In Homestar Runner, after his Lappy got swiped, Strong Bad gorged himself on various chips, which he claimed to be his anti-depressant.
In Neopets the chips and gravy item is described 'The perfect comfort food for a cold windy day'.
In Space Beasts, Ichabod Crane (not that one) really likes a good cup of chamomile tea after a humiliating experience. His catgirl girlfriend Marzipan also wanted a hamburger with extra onions after being held captive for three weeks by aliens.

Western Animation

In the 2017 DuckTales episode "The Shadow War", Scrooge has been brought so close to the Despair Event Horizon due to the boys blaming him for what happened to their mother (even though he tried for ten years to find her) that he has spent three days doing nothing but binging on pizza.
- The later episode "The Phantom and the Sorceress!" shows that Magica DeSpell has been doing the same thing after losing her powers and reduced to performing as a stage magician at Funso's Pizzaria, which is ironically where she orders the take-out from. And she somehow hasn't gained even a pound.
There is one scene in She-Ra and the Princesses of Power where a depressed Mermista (well, more depressed than she usually is) is sulking in a bubble bath while binging on ice cream, with about eight empty gallon-sized ice cream containers on the floor around the tub. And before anyone asks, no, this does not cause her to gain weight. When she finally gets her act together and decides to help the others with the current crisis, it is implied she chooses to do so because the pantry ran out of ice cream.
The episode of Extreme Ghostbusters, "The Luck of the Irish", when Garret gets angry at the others for telling him to "take some time off" due to the curse of bad luck on him:

Garret: Fine! There's only one thing to do when your own teammates stab you in the back, EAT!

And then he storms out to go pig out on pizza.

The Owl House:
- In the episode “Keeping Up A-fear-ances”, Lilith becomes depressed when her mother shows up (having always felt she was on the bad end of Parental Favoritism when she and Eda were kids), and starts binging on ice cream; King, who has recently learned he was the victim of Parental Abandonment, starts to commiserate with her, and after a single scene break, there are about TEN empty ice cream cartons on the floor around them.
- In the episode “Clouds on the Horizon”, after Amity’s siblings try to burn down their parents’ factory, their mother proceeds to lay off half of Alador’s staff and make him and the rest of his staff work overtime to meet Belos’ quota. Not to mention he hasn’t had a weekend off in five years and is starting to realize he’s neglecting his children. Is it really any surprise the poor man is binging on potato chips??

Real Life

Nancy Reagan used to eat bananas in the middle of the night when she couldn't sleep.
It is said that the poet W.H. Auden kept a bowl of cold potatoes by his bedside at night.
James Beard found comfort in marshmallows. He didn't like to toast them, he just liked to eat them right out of the bag.
M.F.K. Fisher wrote about the comfort foods of her friends: one enjoyed a baked potato with lots of butter, another preferred milk toast, and undoubtedly surprising, Mrs. Fisher's comfort food was canned tomato soup. She even had a special pitcher from which to drink it from.
Psychologist Dr. Joyce Brothers finds comfort in floating islands (a dessert consisting of meringues "sailing" on a sea of custard).
William Howard Taft's favorite snack food was almonds; he ate them when he was worried. Which was very often, given how stressful he claimed his job as President was.