A beloved culinary WEBTOON series is finally being reformatted for the printed page, making it accessible to a whole new audience of graphic novel readers. Penguin Random House‘s imprint WEBTOON Unscrolled recently announced that Gourmet Hound, Volume 1: A WEBTOON Unscrolled Graphic Novel, written and illustrated by Robyn Lee Hamada (known to her longtime fans under the creator moniker, “Leehama”), is arriving in bookstores this fall.
Initially serialized on WEBTOON from December 2017 to March 2020, the graphic novel adaptation of Gourmet Hound marks a major milestone for the indie webcomic, which, at the time of this interview’s publication, has over 115 million views and still maintains a passionate online fanbase, even though the series concluded almost six years ago. The cozy foodie drama follows Lucy, a young woman with an extraordinary passion for food and an equally extraordinary sense of smell, in search of the chefs responsible for creating the flavor profiles of her fondest childhood memories — bite by bite, using taste to create powerful, and often emotionally charged, memories, which serve as the building blocks for both individual identity and communal social bonds.
When Lucy learns that the chefs responsible for the magical, irreplaceable flavors of the Dimanche dishes that she grew up eating have all moved on, she decides to take a trek through memory lane and sets out to track each of the former chefs down. After a chance encounter with two former Dimanche chefs, Brie and Graham, Lucy gains two unlikely allies in her quest to reunite the kitchen crew and recapture the taste of her childhood. With each former chef the trio finds, they learn about their personal histories, discover what food means to them, and identify the key ingredients that make each chef’s cooking style uniquely theirs. Thus, what begins as a culinary hunt gradually transforms into a life-changing journey about holding onto the memories that define you.
Below you can check out the official cover art for Gourmet Hound, Vol. 1:
Even though it’s been five-plus years since Gourmet Hound completed its WEBTOON run, its fans have been eager to see the series hit the web-to-print pipeline, saying that they would “totally buy” the physical collection because it would look great on their bookshelves. Luckily for those fans, several of whom are Beat staff writers (here and here), the day they have been eagerly waiting for has finally been announced by the PHR imprint. The first volume of Gourmet Hound‘s collected physical editions will be released on October 27, 2026, and is available for pre-order now on Penguin Random House, Barnes & Noble, Amazon, and more!
The Beat caught up with Hamada to discuss Gourmet Hound‘s graphic novel adaptation, how she approached art and dialogue revisions for the in-print editions while staying true to her younger self’s creative vision for the series, what drew her to using food/taste memory as a narrative device, and how creating the series impacted her relationship with food-related media. Read the full interview below!
OLLIE KAPLAN: What drew you to food/taste memory as a narrative device? In your opinion, how does food/taste memory shape personal and collective identities?
ROBYN LEE HAMADA: It actually started from an anatomy lecture during college! I’ve always had an interest in food and food-related stories, but it wasn’t until I learned about how the olfactory nerves and bulb connect directly to the parts of the brain that process memory and emotion that I started putting together a character with a strong sense of smell whose grief deeply attaches her to her past.
On a personal level, I was born and raised in Hawai`i, which has such a unique and wonderful food culture, but it wasn’t until I went to college in the Midwest that I fully appreciated it. The college I attended had a pretty large population of students from Hawai`i, so I was set up with lots of local snacks from classmates and care packages from home—and that food made it even more vividly clear to me how important familiar tastes are to a sense of “home,” especially when you’re away from it. Like, I ate poke (raw fish!) from a food truck in Nebraska multiple times during one of the summers when I didn’t return home because I was so desperate for it!
So it’s no wonder that one of the main ways by which a person or a community defines their identity is their food. The “taste of home” is something you can use to find community with someone who has the same home as you or share your identity with someone who doesn’t. Whether it be from a specific person’s cooking, a family recipe, a restaurant’s menu, a regional dish, or a type of cuisine, taste is a physical, sensory experience of home that you can literally take with you.
KAPLAN: Gourmet Hound was originally released episodically on WEBTOON in vertical-scroll format. How did the shifts from (a) vertical-scroll to traditional pagination and (b) episodic serialization to unified, collected volumes impact your approach to the story’s pacing and visual rhythm?
HAMADA: The print volume is a reformatted version of the serialized webtoon. I haven’t rewritten or redrawn the comic, so there’s a limited amount that I could do to change the pacing for the print version. We did have some discussions about how to handle the episode/chapter breaks and how much of the story could fit in the first volume, and luckily, there’s a natural break in the story at just the right point to be covered in one volume. Binge reading WEBTOON episodes in their original format is a common practice, so hopefully it shouldn’t be too jarring to read a bunch of chapters in a unified print format!
KAPLAN: How involved were you in the adaptation process?
HAMADA: The conversion to page format is being handled in-house by WEBTOON Unscrolled, but their team runs everything by me for feedback and approval. I’ve also done revisions on the art and dialogue.
KAPLAN: Did adapting Gourmet Hound for print reveal anything new about your storytelling choices, and were you given the opportunity to revise, refine, and/or expand any part of the series for the print edition?
HAMADA: The episodes in the first volume were from 2017 and 2018, so it was a surprise to see how much my artistic sensibilities have changed since then! In particular, I noticed how my sense of humor has changed a bit and how the pacing for the introductory episodes feels a bit slower than what I’d opt for nowadays. While I do think I could’ve rewritten it to be more efficient today, I also appreciate that the past me wasn’t scared to take my time in establishing the characters and their relationships.
I had a chance to revise the art and dialogue for the print version, but I didn’t want to change too much. I want to respect the readers who were fans of the original webtoon and want that version in print, and also the me from 2017. Even if I’ve grown as a writer and artist over the years, I don’t want to erase my choices and work from back then!
KAPLAN: In a 2019 interview with your local newspaper, you mentioned that you’re not much of a cook yourself. Did working on Gourmet Hound change your relationship with cooking and/or food?
HAMADA: More than my relationship with cooking or food itself, I think the biggest change was my relationship with food as entertainment. Working on Gourmet Hound made me more closely examine what exactly I find entertaining, moving, or interesting about food-related media: to what extent is the spectacle of visually appealing dishes enough, and when does it need to be emotionally connected to a character for it to compel me? Is seeing the preparation of food more interesting than seeing someone eating it? What responsibility do I have as an artist creating food-related media in choosing what kinds of foods I present as desirable, normal, exotic, etc.? Those were the kinds of questions I found myself asking more and more as I worked on Gourmet Hound, and it’s probably shaped my taste in what I watch and read, too!
KAPLAN: As someone who was a kitchen noob, how much research went into each dish and/or cuisine featured?
HAMADA: I did my best to research the dishes that showed up in Gourmet Hound, but I’ll be the first to say that I wish I could’ve done more! WEBTOON Originals publishing is incredibly fast-paced (during the episodes included in the first volume of Gourmet Hound, I was publishing two episodes a week), which inevitably meant that my research was lacking in places. Even so, I hope my portrayal was respectful, even when I made mistakes! One of my favorite parts of episode production was the little food fact cards at the end of each episode.
KAPLAN: Gourmet Hound ended in 2020, and you initially told fans on Tumblr that the series was unlikely to be published in print. What changed your mind about doing a print edition, and why now?
HAMADA: It was less that I changed my mind about a print version than that it became more feasible: back in 2020, only a couple of WEBTOON Originals had traditional print publishing deals, while a few others opted for self-published Kickstarter campaigns. Trying to pitch a graphic novel to agents/publishers, reformatting 100+ episodes of a scrolling-format comic to page-format myself, or running a Kickstarter campaign while I was still in school were so daunting that I didn’t want to give any readers undue hope.
KAPLAN: For long-time Gourmet Hound fans, will there be any exciting bonus content in physical copies of the series?
HAMADA: There’s a little bit of new content! One thing I’ll mention is that the food fact cards at the end of each episode, which only began in later episodes, will be included for every chapter of the print version.
KAPLAN: Would you approach a new series differently, knowing that a print edition may follow?
HAMADA: I don’t think I would! I’d like to prioritize the format in which readers would originally read my comic, and if it were a scrolling-format webtoon, I wouldn’t want to compromise the strengths of the scrolling format just because the comic might exist in a different format later.
That being said, I really love page-formatted comics! I used to make webcomics in traditional page format, and I find myself missing the process of structuring panels on a page—I’d love to work in that format again one day.
KAPLAN: How do you think the WEBTOON-to-print pipeline impacts creators, as well as the comic book industry as a whole?
HAMADA: I think any move toward more comics being published is exciting. Webtoons have a relatively low barrier of entry for creators, which is why you can find some of the most diverse and interesting new voices in comics there. With imprints like WEBTOON Unscrolled making print versions of webtoons more possible, I hope a wider range of artists and their stories can be shared with a wider audience of readers.
I also hope that more print publishers will become interested in publishing comics for young adult and adult audiences. Middle-grade comics are huge in print publishing, and WEBTOON readers prove that there’s also an audience for comics aimed at the young adult and adult demographic across all sorts of genres!
KAPLAN: Is there anything else you would like to add?
HAMADA: It’s been a long time since Gourmet Hound first started on WEBTOON, so I’ve been so moved by the support I’ve received since the Volume 1 announcement. I’m really excited to share Gourmet Hound with both new and long-time readers! I hope it’ll make you want to eat something tasty!
Gourmet Hound, Vol. 1, by Robyn Lee Hamada, arrives on October 27, 2026, from WEBTOON Unscrolled. It’s available now for pre-order from Penguin Random House, Barnes & Noble, Amazon, and more!
