>>716464805I got by with the healing from the drum until the very final battle where you don't have it, and instead used the marbled ice cream dish (+30%hp) that I conveniently made several of from the shared cooking with fubuki. Any big %hp healing items probably work well, and if you need RP I feel like they give enough lanterns or bath access to keep you topped off even with consant sacred relic useage. Besides early-mid game where I needed to craft RP medicine, after a certain point I stopped needing food.
The most interesting food that I have no idea if it works are the ones that give 'rare drop increases' like the shared hina bread meal. It's hard to test if those actually do anything, but I do like cooking a bunch and eating them for breakfast before I go out mining dungeons and killing mobs.