The Kamogawa Food Detectives

September 1, 2023

If you like Toshikazu Kawaguchi's internationally best-selling "Before the Coffee Gets Cold," you'll likely be interested in this first in a best-selling Japanese series about a father-daughter cooking team. They don't just deliver elegant cuisinde, they act as food detectives, re-creating meals that their customers describe from long-ago memories. Prepub Alert.

Copyright 2023 Library Journal

Copyright 2023 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

December 1, 2023
Contemporary Japanese authors have created quite an affecting niche, straightforward stories with overwhelming emotional resonance. Former dentist Kashiwai presents the first of his already internationally best-selling eight-book series, now amiably translated by Kirkwood (17 instances of reckon!). Nagare Kamogawa and his thirtysomething daughter, Koishi, run an unusual Kyoto restaurant with no website, no signs, no menu. Yet customers are many, drawn to a single-line ad--"We Find Your Food"--in Gourmet magazine. Besides offering impeccable fare, the pair are also food detectives who recreate significant dishes from the memories of those lucky enough to find the Kamogawa Diner's unmarked doors. A widower anticipating remarriage seeks his first wife's noodles. An elderly woman wants the beef stew she had 55 years ago during an unexpected marriage proposal. A powerful man hopes for the mackerel sushi from his difficult youth. A divorc�e requests the tonkatsu (fried cutlet) favored by her restaurateur ex-husband. A university student longs for the spaghetti she ate with her grandfather. A businessman solicits his late mother's stew. With impossibly scant details, Nagare satisfies toothsome dreams.

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December 15, 2023
A father-daughter restaurant duo serves up six cozy vignettes in the first installment of this bestselling Japanese series, translated by Kirkwood. In the back streets of present-day Kyoto, Koishi Kamogawa and her father, Nagare, are running a restaurant that isn't your ordinary dining spot. Sure, the Kamogawa Diner features mouthwatering cuisine, but the thing that sets it apart is the way Koishi and Nagare scrupulously re-create meals from their clients' hazy memories, investigating all avenues in their quest for authenticity. In "Nabeyaki-Udon," an older widower seeks to experience the dish just the way his late wife used to make it. In "Mackerel Sushi," a distinguished gentleman of means hopes to taste sushi just like he used to eat on the veranda of his neighbor's home as a boy. And time is of the essence for a piano teacher on a desperate quest to re-create the perfect "Tonkatsu." Given that only a vague ad in Gourmet Monthly has alerted people to the restaurant's existence--the ad doesn't even include an address--clients seem to happen upon the place by sheer luck, or perhaps fate. Though each of the six stand-alone chapters follows the same formulaic recipe, Kashiwai's unique blend of seasonings is more than enough to transform each into a five-star-worthy dish. Koishi and Nagare strive to re-create not only the precise dishes their clients want, but also to envelop them in a warm memory blanket of nostalgia. Readers won't find dead bodies or scandalous affairs here, but they will eagerly devour each morsel of this miso soup for the soul, complete with a purring cat called Drowsy for good measure. A nourishing collection of bite-sized stories with a hearty dash of savory flavor.

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Starred review from January 1, 2024

Published in Japan in 2013 to great acclaim, each chapter of this outstanding novel (Kashiwai's first to be translated into English) begins with a different character--a policeman, a politician, a piano teacher, an entrepreneur, a housewife, and a restauranteur's ex-wife--wandering the side streets of Kyoto to find the mysterious and hidden Kawogawa restaurant, which doubles as an agency for "food detectives." Visitors to the agency express their longing to taste a specific dish from their past. Putting together scant clues and partial memories, it is up to retired policeman and now master chef Nagare Kawogawa and his daughter Koishi to search out and successfully recreate the meal. What ensues is a culinary and cultural exploration of Japanese cuisine. The need to taste a particular dish again is deeply rooted in the desire to relive the past and, in some cases, make amends for mistakes. The novel includes mouthwatering descriptions of food as well as a nuanced description of life in Japan. There's also a restaurant cat named Drowsy who inserts himself into the mix. VERDICT Readers will take delight in Kashiwai's exquisite meals and the culinary history that accompanies them.--Jacqueline Snider

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