Occurrences of the Gram positive pathogenic Listeria monocytogenesin foods are often found to be low in level with the possibility of being in an injured state due to the food processes. Various standard protocols have been established to enable the recovery and identification ofL. monocytogenescells from foods. Even though L. monocytogenes is a comprehensively studied bacterium, due to its high mortality rate in immunocompromised individuals, the numerous studies carried out on recovery methods each proposed a different enrichment medium for different injuries implicated on the cell and that the existing protocols were shown to have insufficient efficiency in recovering the pathogen. The differences in recovery inefficiencies by each protocol may result in underestimation of L. monocytogenesin food.  This review looks into the development and comparison studies of recovery methods for L.monocytogeneswhich may be useful as a reference on protocol and modification methods to be adopted for recovery as well as standardizing future optimization and developmental studies on culturing and resuscitating sub-lethally injured L. monocytogenesfrom foods.