I dig the aesthetics as well as the gameplay. I do believe it has huge potential to be a sandbox/restaurant sim if you wish to go beyond just "finding recipes".
I like how you need to physically explore the environment to get ingredients. Would love to see rare ingredients being placed on difficult places that requires you to do platforming or other risky maneuver. Gameplay itself is intuitive and the controls make sense. However, there are little things that annoys me. Having to go through portals multiple times just to grab a 4 items each trip is a little tedious. A backpack would surely make the experience better. And you can add mechanism to it such as making it weigh you down if you put too many ingredients in them. But other than that it is quite enjoyable.
I would also suggest adding more content regarding what you can do with the food you make. Having a restaurant sim attached to it might make the expiration and experimentation more meaningful (like how Dave the Diver does it).