Cooking With Dog

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

Hi, I am Francis, the host of this show, Cooking With Dog.

Cooking With Dog is a series of YouTube cooking videos showing how to prepare various Japanese dishes. The dog part comes from the show's "host" and narrator Francis, a grey Poodle, and not because they cook with dog meat. It demonstrates how to cook various popular and traditional Japanese dishes in a granular series of simple, "no-stress" steps over the course of a five to ten minute video. Each video features a single dish or entrée; variations on the same dish -- such as traditional and Hiroshima-style okonomiyaki -- each merit their own video. The recipes featured tend to reflect seasonal availability of ingredients.

It premiered in 2007 and continues to release new videos as of early 2023, although after the death of Francis in 2016 its releases became less frequent and irregular in appearance.

You can watch the videos at their YouTube channel here.

Not to be confused with an allegedly traditional Chinese cooking ingredient.


Tropes used in Cooking With Dog include:
  • Author Existence Failure: Averted; at one point the chef had a serious accident on her bike and was hospitalized, but she recovered much more quickly than anticipated.
    • Francis himself died in 2016. By 2018, some episodes filmed before his death had been released. In subsequent videos, Chef wears a T-shirt with a cartoon of Francis, whose mouth and eyes are animated using computer graphics and narrates the steps during the episode. Toy stuffed animal dogs in Francis's likeness are also staged next to Chef as she cooks
  • Catch Phrase: "Good luck in the kitchen!"
  • Cooking Show
  • Cult Classic
  • Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": The chef is referred to only as "Chef."
  • Holiday Mode: Francis wears a Santa Hat in the Christmas Cake video (no, not that Christmas Cake). Christmas Mode is in full effect for the Crepe video, with the back of the kitchen decked out in lights and decorations.
  • Impossibly Delicious Food: According to some of the comments, at least.
  • Lucky Charms Title: The "o" in "dog" is replaced with a paw print. Originally the two o's in "cooking" were as well.
  • No Name Given: "Chef" and the show's producer (who also provides Francis' voice) both have chosen to remain anonymous.[1]
  • Precious Puppy: It wouldn't be quite as cute without a dog acting as the host for a cooking show.
  • Please Subscribe to Our Channel: Every video has "RATE ME!" or "YOU LIKE BUTTON!"
  • Public Domain Soundtrack: Frédéric Chopin's Minute Waltz plays in the background. It's also known as the Puppy Waltz.
  • Spin-Off: Go! Francis!, in 2015. This web series features a stuffed toy version of Francis, traveling throughout Japan while exploring specific food topics, such as bento, Japanese bread, or ramen. Toy!Francis visits locations associated with the subject food and interviews experts on it.
  • Temporary Substitute: Actor (and friend of Chef) Shin Kohama took over for her while she recovered from her accident.
  1. Despite this, Chef has found herself a minor celebrity and recognized on the street by fans.