The Restaurant of Lost Recipes

Hisashi Kashiwai


I had gotten this book as a present from my mom and brother, and I thought it looked really good. It was definitely super sweet, but I didn't enjoy it as much as I thought I was going to.


This book is about a restaurant that hosts a "food detective service" - people can describe foods that they want the restaurant to replicate, and the father and daughter who work there will investigate and replicate it for them. The book is broken up into fix or six chapters, each being about a different person and food that they want replicated. Each food has a backstory, something nostalgic that they want to remember. No matter how different each character is from each other, they each just want to be able to experience a certain food again.


This book was really sweet and each character's story was fairly interesting. The thing that knocked this book down to three stars was it's repetition. It wasn't exactly boring, but each chapter followed the exact same structure. Even though each character was different, they all wanted some sort of food that brought them back to a simpler time- and although this was cute on its own, it was frustrating that it was the same for each character.


I didn't hate reading this book at all, but it's definitely not a book that I would reread.


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