I like the Hunter's Call faction, but for supposedly being the chefs of the sea, there are no player or ship customizations to earn that are explicitly chef or food themed, unless you score the Season 9 plunder pass right now.
A battle with a beast of the sea is invigorating, but you only get cosmetics themed for the beasts themselves, not for what you can pull off as a cook. Eventually the title of "Hunter" is rather all-encompassing & boring if the end result is just a piece of cooked meat instead of a proper meal of multiple ingredients, or something majestic along the lines of the "six-course platter" I've heard one of the sea post NPCs mention. Even the sovereigns boast about their private island chefs being the "best" in the seas, meanwhile we are having to stare at meat on pans hundreds of times if we want to please the so-called "chefs" of the seas that are the Hunters.
So, here's an idea for a cooking update as a flagship for a future season: Add a cooking pot next to your ship's pan (replacing the trinket slot which would realistically burn your trinket up anyway), a cooking pot inside sea forts, and a pot inside the tavern at Port Merrick. If anyone here has played Raft, you would know what I'm talking about. Combining multiple ingredients into one big pot for a hearty meal is a cozy reward for putting your foraging skills to the test, not to mention opening up the cooking duty of your crewmates some more.
But what can we possibly put together when all we have is just fruit & meat? Why, add vegetables to the game! Buy a vegetable crate from the merchant alliance, or find them in the world alongside where fruit spawns, either from barrels or along wreckage from shores. A good pirate needs to eat his or her vegetables too if they want to avoid more trips to the Ferry Of The Damned!
Vegetables such as mushrooms, carrots, onions, potatoes & chili peppers would be counterparts to the 5 fruits we all know and love. A shark stew, Hawaiian barbecue, or coconut curry chicken are just a few combinations to give the Hunter's Call a run for their gold (which they will pay to you anyway for turning in these meals). All meals will require 5 ingredients.
Or if you're feeling adventurous, you can consume these meals for small buffs to your player, such as an oxygen & swimming enhancement from a fish dish, longer health regeneration, or one that will be popular with PVPers: minor defense buff that will definitely require more foraging effort to complete the meal for, and like the other meals, will also require you to keep up with your cooking in order to turn the tables.
To balance this, you may only have 1 buff applied to you at a time, and you may only carry 1 meal in your inventory. If necessary, vegetables would have to be 1/4th as common as fruits from barrels, requiring a trip or two to a sea fort for their many many barrels.
For more ingredients, why not add wild cows to the game? Kill and harvest them for beef, a new type of meat. Or feed them fruits/veggies and they will let you get milk from them.
Or cage chickens, feed them fruits/veggies, and they will produce eggs for you.
I think carrying a big caged cow would look ridiculous, unless Rare makes them small like the pigs. Otherwise you'd have to stay on the island with the cow to milk one.
Why not introduce new titles like "Legendary Chef" for your player & rename "The Rogue" ship milestone path to "The Tavern" and add milestones for using the cooking pots?
I think the Sea Of Thieves could do with some memorable food, and there'd be many creators, partners & fans to show love to the game by recreating meals from the game one day.
