Movies like Midnight Diner 2 (2016)
The best movies like Midnight Diner 2 (2016) are Midnight Diner (2014), Sweet Bean (2015) and Umami (2023). If Midnight Diner 2 hooked you with its drama and comedy, these 30 similar films are what to watch next, and every pick says why it matches.
Quick picks
- Highest ratedTampopo (1985)7.8/10 from 469 votes
- NewestSavage House (2026)Released 2026
- In JapaneseMidnight Diner (2014)Also in Japanese
- Same seriesMidnight Diner (2014)Midnight Diner
Midnight Diner (2014)
A restaurant opens at midnight. Both the menu offerings and personality of the owner draw a series of flawed patrons including Tamako, whose boyfriend has passed away, live-in worker Michiru, and ruckus-raising Kenzo.
Why it matches: Same series: Midnight Diner · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisSweet Bean (2015)
The master of a dorayaki pastry store hires a 76-year-old woman whose talents attract customers from all over. But she's hiding a troubling secret. Life's joys are found in the little details, and no matter what may be weighing you down, everyone loves a good pastry.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisUmami (2023)
Following a near-death experience France's leading chef throws himself into a quest seeking the flavor that has confounded his life since he was defeated by a Japanese chef's bowl of noodles as a young man.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both comedy & drama
Kamome Diner (2006)
On a quiet street in Helsinki, Sachie has opened a diner featuring rice balls. For a month she has no customers. Then, in short order, she has her first customer, meets Midori, a gangly Japanese tourist, and invites her to stay with her.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & comedy
Worth the HypeMovies like thisRamen Shop (2018)
Masato is a young ramen chef in Japan. When he finds his late mother's journal after the sudden death of his emotionally distant father, he takes it with him to her native country, Singapore, hoping to piece together the story of his family and his life.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Last Recipe (2017)
A famous chef who is tasked with tracking down a 70-year-old missing recipe.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Little Forest: Winter/Spring (2015)
Ichiko bakes a cake for an end-of-year party with her friends. In the depths of winter, making mochi and curry keeps the people of Komori warm. Later, spring brings thoughts of her absent mother as well as rice planting and sakura, and she begins to think of leaving Komori behind again.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisLittle Forest: Summer/Autumn (2014)
Fleeing heartbreak in the big city, Ichiko returns to Komori, her rural hometown. She battles summer's rain and humidity, bakes her own bread, grows hothouse tomatoes and tills the fields. During autumn, the time for pickling and preserving fish and sweet potatoes, Ichiko begins reaping rice and recalls her departure five years before.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisEat Drink Man Woman (1994)
Retired and widowed Chinese master chef Chu lives in modern day Taipei, with his three attractive daughters, all of whom are unattached. Soon, each daughter encounters a new man in their lives. When these new relationships blossom, stereotypes are broken and the living situation within the family changes.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both comedy & drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Secret of the Grain (2007)
In southern France, a Franco-Arabic shipyard worker along with his partner's daughter pursues his dream of opening a restaurant.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisAlways: Sunset on Third Street '64 (2012)
As the Tokyo Olympics usher in a wave of rapid modernisation, the residents of Third Street face new beginnings as Mutsuko becomes involved with a seemingly perfect young doctor who may not be all he appears, while Chagawa struggles with his stalled writing career and what it truly means to be a father to the boy he has raised as his own.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both comedy & drama
Tampopo (1985)
In this humorous paean to the joys of food, a pair of truck drivers happen onto a decrepit roadside shop selling ramen noodles. The widowed owner, Tampopo, begs them to help her turn her establishment into a paragon of the "art of noodle-soup making". Interspersed are satirical vignettes about the importance of food to different aspects of human life.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both comedy
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Hundred-Foot Journey (2014)
A story centered around an Indian family who moves to France and opens a restaurant across the street from a Michelin-starred French restaurant.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & comedy
Worth the HypeMovies like thisAlways: Sunset on Third Street 2 (2007)
A year has passed in postwar Tokyo, and struggling writer Chagawa enters the Akutagawa Prize competition in hopes of securing a better future for the boy in his care, while the Suzuki family unexpectedly take in a new relative who looks down on their humble way of life.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both comedy & drama
Mostly Martha (2001)
Martha is a single woman who lives for one passion: cooking. The head chef at a chic restaurant, Martha has no time for anything - or anyone - else. But Martha's solitary life is shaken when a fateful accident brings her sister's eight-year-old daughter, Lina, to her doorstep.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & comedy
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisLicense to Live (1999)
Having fallen into a coma following a car accident at 14, Yutaka wakes ten years later and realizes that his family is no longer intact: father, mother and sister live at different places, so he decides to reopen the farm that his family once ran.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & comedy
Our Little Sister (2015)
After the death of their estranged father, 3 adult sisters invite their teenaged half-sister to live with them.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisWood Job! (2014)
After failing his university entrance exam, Yuki Hirano sets his eyes on the role of a forestry trainee. Setting off for training he doubts his decision many times, but eventually after passing the training course, he is sent to Kamusari Village for a year of work experience - where he becomes assimilated with the beauty of nature and the warm-hearted people of the village.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & comedy
Worth the HypeMovies like thisSilver Spoon (2014)
Ooejo Agricultural High School is located in Hokkaido. Most students are from families involved in agriculture and their dreams are to continue working in agriculture. Meanwhile, Yuugo (Kento Nakajima), who graduated from a prestigious middle school, applied to the Ooejo Agricultural High School just because the school has a dormitory. Yuugo, who grew up in the city, finds himself in an unfamiliar environment at Ooejo Agricultural High School, surrounded by nature and animals. Yuugo is also the only one who doesn't know what type of career he wants to pursue. Yuugo becomes impatient. He goes through struggles everyday, but he also gets to know the other students and rural life in general. He begins to grow as a person.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & comedy
Daphne (2017)
Daphne is a young woman negotiating the tricky business of modern life. Caught in the daily rush of her restaurant job and a nightlife kaleidoscope of new faces, she is witty, funny, the life of the party. Too busy to realise that deep down she is not happy. When she saves the life of a shopkeeper stabbed in a failed robbery, the impenetrable armour she wears to protect herself begins to crack, and Daphne is forced to confront the inevitability of a much-needed change in her life.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both comedy & drama
SnoozefestMovies like thisBakuman (2015)
Moritaka Mashiro doesn't want to follow in the path of his uncle who worked as a manga artist, but ultimately died because of exhaustion. Moritaka Mashiro figures he will graduate from school and work at an office. Things change though when falls in love with a girl at school. The girl, who hopes to become a voice actress, tells Moritaka they can marry, but only after they both achieve their dreams. Moritaka then teams up with fellow classmate Akito Takagi to publish their first manga.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & comedy
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Lunchbox (2013)
A mistaken delivery in Mumbai's famously efficient lunchbox delivery system (Mumbai's Dabbawallahs) connects a young housewife to a stranger in the dusk of his life. They build a fantasy world together through notes in the lunchbox. Gradually, this fantasy threatens to overwhelm their reality.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisA Gentle Breeze in the Village (2007)
Soyo, a student in a school with only six students, develops feelings for the new student, Hiromi, who has moved from Tokyo.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both comedy & drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Asadas! (2020)
Masashi is a photographer. He has his parents and an older brother Yukihiro. Through the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami, Masashi begins to take staged photos of his family.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & comedy
Worth the HypeMovies like thisEast Side Sushi (2014)
Years of working in the food industry have made Juana, a working-class Latina, a chef of speed and skill. Searching for financial stability, she stumbles into a high-energy, male-dominated Japanese cuisine kitchen. The new atmosphere re-ignites her passions for food and life and makes her hungry to get mixed up in the flavors of this new world.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisSurvival Family (2017)
A world wide electrical outage occurs. Everything that requires electricity comes to a stop. Tokyo is nearly ruined. Yoshiyuki Suzuki decides to escape from Tokyo with his family.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both comedy & drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisMy Dinner with Andre (1981)
Wally, a struggling playwright and actor, reluctantly agrees to catch up with his old friend Andre, a theater director who disappeared several years prior in order to travel the world. Meeting at a posh Manhattan restaurant, the two share life stories, anecdotes and philosophical musings over the course of an evening meal.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & comedy
Worth the HypeMovies like thisSavage House (2026)
Against the backdrop of 18th century England, a massive pox outbreak, and Jacobite uprising – Sir Chauncey Savage and Lady Savage blindly pursue a better life. It's not without a tinge of irony that their family name is the Savages, for this is a Savage House indeed, filled with duels, decadence, and bloodshed.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both comedy & drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisRent-a-Cat (2012)
A young woman who rents out cats to lonely old folks finds her life turned upside down when a young man from her past shows back up in her life.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both comedy & drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisIt Runs in the Family (2003)
This is the story of a dysfunctional New York family, and their attempts to reconcile
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both comedy & drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like this
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Frequently asked questions
What are the best movies like Midnight Diner 2?
The closest matches to Midnight Diner 2 are Midnight Diner (2014), Sweet Bean (2015) and Umami (2023). Below are 27 more, each with the reason it matches.
What should I watch after Midnight Diner 2?
People who watched Midnight Diner 2 most often go on to Sweet Bean (2015), Umami (2023) and Kamome Diner (2006).
What is the highest-rated movie like Midnight Diner 2?
Tampopo (1985), rated 7.8/10 by 469 TMDB users.
What is the newest movie like Midnight Diner 2?
Savage House (2026) is the most recent release on this list.
Is Midnight Diner 2 part of a series?
Yes. It belongs to Midnight Diner, which includes Midnight Diner (2014).
Are there Japanese movies like Midnight Diner 2?
Yes: Midnight Diner (2014), Sweet Bean (2015) and Umami (2023).
How are movies similar to Midnight Diner 2 chosen?
First come films that Trakt’s viewers watch alongside Midnight Diner 2, then TMDB’s recommendations and films it rates as similar in story and genre. Each pick says which signal put it there.