The Simple Joy of Food in Animal Crossing

Thanks to Turkey Day's celebration of food, I rediscovered the true spirit of the island life.

After eight long months, I finally paid off my home loan in Animal Crossing: New Horizons. It cost me 5.696 million Bells, a dizzying sum that I squeezed out of every disposable fish, insect, fruit, fossil, and piece of furniture I could lay my hands on. This mad dash for money burned me out and drew me away from the game, up until last month when the fall season came around and lured me back.

Let me tell you: it’s great to be liberated from Tom Nook’s credit scheme. Without the shadow of my outstanding mortgage making me calculate every item’s value, the island has returned to a state of leisure and calm. No more debts, house expansions, costly civil engineering projects, and arbitrary island ratings. I was free to stroll about, casually watering a random flower bed and passing by my fruit trees without needing to harvest them for Bells. It’s this laid-back atmosphere that allowed me to honestly enjoy activities like yesterday’s Turkey Day—the in-game equivalent of Thanksgiving and a time to celebrate the island’s bounty.

Like every holiday in Animal Crossing, Turkey Day is celebrated with the help of a special visitor. This season’s guest is a chef named Franklin who comes to honor the island’s riches by preparing meals using ingredients that you can catch, pick, and harvest. For each fish, mushroom, or pumpkin that you collect for Franklin, he prepares a dish that is served on a communal table where your neighbors eagerly wait.

I immediately fell in love with this event when the first meal—a glorious bowl of chowder made with fresh Manila clam—arrived at the table. Even if for just a day, Animal Crossing finally treated the island’s edible resources for what they are: food that’s meant to be enjoyed and passed around. Yes, Franklin rewards you with Turkey Day-themed items for each completed dish, but I instead found myself buoyed by the promise of more food on the table and the happiness that it gave my neighbors. Even the common sea bass, a fish I grew to dislike for its low sale price, found itself transformed into a divinely plated fish meunière for all on the island to behold and enjoy. No amount of turnips could replace the purity of a perfectly cooked meal, it turns out.

And have you seen what these dishes look like? They look absolutely mouth-watering. There are details in each dish, like the morsels of mussel in the gratin or the cute little ridges in the pumpkin pie’s crust, that make them good enough to eat and worth all the effort. No wonder my neighbors wouldn’t stop circling the table.

Elsewhere on the island, some of the residents opted to stay at home and prepare their own Turkey Day dishes. In a series of mini trading sequences, I helped each of them finish their cooking in exchange for a tip to help Franklin improve his own dishes. As a reward for giving my neighbor Bubbles a certain fish for her recipe, she told me the secret ingredient to top-tier chowder. (It was scallops.) This is the oral tradition of recipe-sharing that I love to see in my neighborhood! It was the first time I felt truly connected to the community I built—a place linked by everyone’s personal relationship with food and their willingness to enjoy it with others.

I would love it if cooking became a permanent activity in Animal Crossing. There’s a special happiness to be had in gathering resources, not for the amount of Bells they’re worth, but for the kind of dishes you can make and give to your neighbors as you please. While short-lived, Turkey Day demonstrated the true spirit of the island life: slowing down, appreciating its bounties, and enjoying them in the company of the folks around you.