Pokémon Pokopia: Where To Find Chef Dente's Buddy's Book

3 weeks ago 26

Published Mar 18, 2026, 4:45 PM EDT

Chris is a Gaming Editor at ScreenRant. He has been a professional writer since 2009, and has written for top TV, comics, movie, and video game outlets like Engadget, Polygon, Destructoid, and more. He brings with him an expertise in every game genre, no matter how niche or mainstream.

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Pokémon Pokopia is far bigger than it seems at first glance. In addition to a fully-featured storyline that spans multiple regions, there's also a ton of sidequests that will take up a chunk of your time.

Where Is The Chef Dente Buddy Book?

"It's Closer Than You Think"

Once you finish the first major questline for Withering Wastelands, you can enter two more areas: Rocky Ridges and Bleak Beach. The former zone hosts Chef Dente, a key NPC who teaches you the joys of cooking and how to make useful power-up-enabling food recipes.

Here's how everything plays out, big picture, with the Chef Dente questline:

You free Chef Dente with the upgraded form of Cut, unlocking recipes and the cooking mechanic.
Progress through Chef Dente's questline to learn how to cook different types of food.
Complete the party storyline.
Visit Chef Dente again, and build him a kitchen habitat.
Chef Dente will ask you to find his "Buddy's Book" to glean a secret ingredient.

Here, Chef Dente will ask you for another favor: recalling one of the greatest flavors of all time for a dish he's cooking. He seems to remember that it's found in his "Buddy's Book," which is "much closer than you think." Because of this hint, I scoured the area above the kitchen and the surrounding area to no avail.

However, the book is merely located in front of the Pokémon Center in Rocky Ridges after you trigger the quest. The quest "spawns" the book in, and the "closer than you think" hint was as vague as possible.

It Just Appears At The Pokémon Center

The Questline Triggers It

You can walk right up to the Pokémon Center and interact with the book on the ground to the right of the building (facing it). Once you pick up the book, head back to Chef Dente. He'll be inspired to add Chesto Berries as the secret ingredient, and the questline will be complete. Phew! That was a pretty long one, all things considered.

While the game does a fantastic job of leading you on the right path, occasionally you'll have to figure things out on your own. The best part is that if any element of that is frustrating, you can leave the area, do something else, and come back. A sequel could expand on this luxury further, with more zones and greater disparity between the biomes.

Pokémon Pokopia is a massive game, full of tasks like this that aren't obvious at first glance. The game is far better if you sit back and enjoy the journey.