Reading Diary: The Kamogawa Food Detectives by Hisashi Kashiwai, translated by Jesse Kirkwood

Here is a synopsis from the publisher's website:

What’s the one dish you’d do anything to taste just one more time?

Down a quiet backstreet in Kyoto exists a very special restaurant. Run by Koishi Kamogawa and her father Nagare, the Kamogawa Diner serves up deliciously extravagant meals. But that’s not the main reason customers stop by . . .

The father-daughter duo are ‘food detectives’. Through ingenious investigations, they are able to recreate dishes from a person’s treasured memories – dishes that may well hold the keys to their forgotten past and future happiness. The restaurant of lost recipes provides a link to vanished moments, creating a present full of possibility.

I picked this up after reading forestofglory's brief write up. I've been in the mood for cozy, and this is definitely a cozy book. Now, even though I read the synopsis before I got the book, I somehow got it into my head that this was about a father-daughter restaurant duo who solves real crimes on the side. It is not that. A person comes to the diner run by Koishi and Nagare Kamogawa, describes a meal they wish to recreate, and the Kamogawas do their best to make it happen.

This book is very slender, only 207 pages long, with six short chapters focusing on various customers (I think -- I don't have the book with me right now).

While I'm glad I read this book, I don't think I'll read the sequel, which is due out in October. I think this style of book just isn't for me. It's been compared to the book Before the Coffee Gets Cold, which I tried to read a few years ago and gave up on, and I think the comparison is apt. While I did like the descriptions of the meals, which sent me to look up all the dishes because I had no idea what most of the dishes or ingredients were, in general, this book left me feeling ironically empty. I like the slice-of-life style but I want to spend a little more time with characters and see the larger world a bit more. The details we do get are akin to high quality ingredients in a sample platter of a book. I did find it annoying that the premise is repeated at the beginning of every chapter. It makes sense for the characters, but because the book is so small, it gets repetitive for the reader.

Ultimately, I think this just reinforces that this type of fiction is Not For Me. I thought it was well written, and I found the translation to be pretty smooth, so if you like a little candy box of a book, then I think you will like this book. I'll go back to my Defend the Realm fantasy. 😁