Canteen and many more

[Katsuma]

Should I Unlock all ingredients for Canteen in Asteria (base game), is it still viable when I reach Iceborne content? And What should I do to reach Iceborne properly?

Thank you for you answer, I really appreciate it.

[sir_lami]

Yes, upgrading the canteen increases the ingredients you can get, and often adds new platters with various bonuses. I upgraded mine all the way, and I don't regret doing so! :3

[r∞l]

There's some important food skills like safeguard, bombardier, moxie or zoomaster.
Prioritize those...you know what, just unlock everything as you never know when you could need them.

[cruste]

canteen is fully optional, simply join a populated session and you don't have to worry about missing ingredients.

simply keep playing, beetlefarm upgrades are nice to have so you can max your passive income, while doing some hunts.
do the lunastra special assignment for the temporal mantle, it starts with the quest "the blazing sun"

rocksteady is a little bit tougher to get so better keep playing iceborne, until your hr level will automaticly rise to hr50, than do the hr event quest thronetaker to unlock the mantle.

good early mr armor come from great jagras, kulu or the beetles simply mix them to get your usual weakness exploit+3, affinity+7 and crit up+3 but don't worry too much about the skill and simply focus on finishing the story, later on you can switch to some fulgur anjanth or ordogaron parts.
early good range armor comes from narga.

[lexilogo]

Unlocking all Astera ingredients is a good thing to do. You can make some really useful recipes like eating for Lucky Cat for more quest rewards, and I believe the way the Canteen works, the more ingredients you unlock, the more Fresh ingredients you have on average and thus the better the overall quality of your meals is gonna get.

I would say the two most important pieces of Iceborne prep in basegame, however, are completing all the Grimkalyne side activities (including befriending the Gajalaka in the Witcher 3 singleplayer sidequest) and unlocking all the Mantles.