The Restaurant of Lost Recipes by Hisashi Kashiwai

Kamogawawashokudo Okawari (published by Shogakukan, Tokyo 2014)

Translated by Jesse Kirkwood

G.P. Putnam’s Sons/Penguin RH

publishing date: 08-October-2024

Also by this author, The Kamogawa Food Detectives

Publisher’s Summary:

We all hold lost recipes in our hearts. A very special restaurant in Kyoto helps find them . . .

Tucked away down a Kyoto backstreet lies the extraordinary Kamogawa Diner, run by Chef Nagare and his daughter, Koishi. The father-daughter duo have reinvented themselves as “food detectives,” offering a service that goes beyond cooking mouth-watering meals. Through their culinary sleuthing, they revive lost recipes and rekindle forgotten memories.

From the Olympic swimmer who misses his estranged father’s bento lunchbox to the one-hit-wonder pop star who remembers the tempura she ate to celebrate her only successful record, each customer leaves the diner forever changed—though not always in the ways they expect . . .

The Kamogawa Diner doesn’t just serve meals—it’s a door to the past through the miracle of delicious food. A beloved bestseller in Japan, The Restaurant of Lost Recipes is a tender and healing novel for fans of Before the Coffee Gets Cold.

Review:

Kashiwai’s book of six mysteries took me by a surprise in the most comforting way. When cozy mysteries are discussed, the genre frequently has culinary themes (often with puns in the titles) and set in coffee shops, tea houses, catering services, or with a cooking hobbyist character. In Kashiwai’s The Restaurant of Lost Recipes, the food is the mystery.

At The Kamogawa Diner, a humble establishment with not even a sign to mark its presence, owner Nagare Kamogawa and his daughter Koishi serve food as one would expect of a diner; but their real business is solving food mysteries. This has nothing to do with forensics nor poisons. It’s psychologically cozy and creates a reading experience that fills one with hope, closure, and joy for the secondary characters (the clients who come for help).

Each mystery is two chapters. The first is when a client arrives—often confused or hesitant—seeking a meal they remember as an experience with little details about the tastes. The Kyoto setting allows for many styles of rice, fish, and plenty of sake or tea, but even the sake and tea are specially chosen by Nagare. His passion for food and nostalgia are not supernatural, yet they do seem like a gift in the same way Sherlock Holmes notices every single thing in a room or about a person’s presentation. Nagare knows what people are seeking when they describe the mysterious meals of the past they are looking for.

It isn’t that a mystery book comes along in American English (translated) that doesn’t feature at least one dead body as the source of the case to solve. The Restaurant of Lost Recipes has none of that. There is one deceased person, Nagare’s wife and Koishi’s mother Kikuko. She is always present in spirit. At the diner, there is a private room filled with tatami mats and an altar to her. In each story, Nagare and Koishi are given a moment to pay respects to her.

With great cozy mysteries, there’s an iconic animal companion and The Restaurant of Lost Recipes by Hisashi Kashiwai is no different there. A roaming neighborhood cat called Drowsy appears in each story to greet the clients at the Kamogawa Diner and hoping for some fish. Nagare acts as if Drowsy is an inconvenient visitor, but he genuinely likes the cat as long as he stays outside away from the kitchen. Perhaps, Drowsy is present as their Luck Cat (Neko) usually seen in restaurants as a white cat statue and a waving paw here in Asian-American establishments.

There’s never a doubt for the reader that Nagare will find the dish the client wants. In fact, there isn’t a lot shown in his journeys from small fishing town to big city. It’s done as a wrap up while the mystery dish is served to the clients in the stories’ second parts. What readers can get a feeling for in regards to the Kyoto environment is how drastically the weather changes throughout this year of six food mysteries. From scorching heat to the most bitter of icy winter, Kashiwai uses succinct ways to express what the clients are physically feeling and emotionally feeling.

Summary:

Highest recommendations! A most unusual reading experience for American cozy mystery fans. The characters have deeply rooted, impassioned emotions as reasons to want their mysteries solved, but the author has a finesse to make it feel like everything will work out.

Rating: 5 stars

Or should I say, 5 paws

Founder and Editor-in-Chief of AmberUnmasked.com and Vodka O'Clock Podcast. Author of The Farrah Wethers Mysteries, comic book short stories, prose, and non-fiction. Cosplayer and figure model.