English language
Published 2024 by Cengage Gale.
A retired policeman turned chef and his single daughter run a restaurant where they recreate dishes stuck in the memory of their clients with astonishing accuracy.
Such a cozy comfort read. The descriptors in this book are wonderful and really brought me to the setting. I enjoyed the ease at which each chapter/story began and ended. A wonderful quick read that gives all the feels.
This is more a collection of stories about this tavern in Kyoto that is also a food detective agency. Visitors find the agency because they long for special foods they tasted in the past, but all the stories are tales about life more than anything else.
Very in line with other Japanese contemporary novels, the writing is beautifully focused customs and details. You could say this is a uplifting version of "Before the Coffee Gets Cold"
This book was very Japanese: obsessed over the smallest details of recipes - where the potatoes come from or the size of breadcrumbs in millimeters. Each recipe found by the detective brings with it a back story which is heartwarming.
This book made me hungry but I could not eat it. So that was sad. Also if you forgot what you were doing last week, then you will feel real dumb in this Japanese restaurant, because there are plenty of characters in this book who recall menu details, names, what they had for tea, every ingredient they used for a meal, from half a century or more.
One issue I had was that this detective agency has a TERRIBLE business plan. They tell their clients to pay what they want. They do not advertise. They give away free meals. They do not have proper signs nor a website. They accept vague quests with little chance of success, wasting many potentially profitable working hours.
Na-uh.
