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3.31 AVERAGE
3.31 AVERAGE
This was fun but it took me a while to finally read it. I have it on my cookbook shelf and would flip through it while cooking and when no pots were overflowing or foods burning.
A not very interesting re-telling of Yojimbo. I liked the artwork, however.
In a near-future, vaguely dystopian Los Angeles, food culture is everything: chefs are the new rock stars, getting a reservation at a hip restaurant is like winning the lottery. Two cooking "families" have replaced the mob: the more traditional haute-cuisine guys vs. the slow food flexitarians... Somewhere on the outside of this scene is Jiro, a sushi chef with a tiny restaurant but a huge reputation. Jiro takes his work extremely seriously, and if you are dumb enough to mishandle your chopsticks or drop rice into the soy sauce, he won't take it very kindly. He inadvertently brings the attention of the two food factions on himself when he dispatches a crass customer who turns out to have been an important supplier, and both the traditionalists and the hippies will go to great lengths to try get him to join their side of the culinary war.
For an insatiable Bourdain fangirl like myself, this was just pure fun: I'm sure chopping up customers (who got sushi etiquette wrong) or line cooks (who wanted to garnish their veal blanquette) into little pieces is something Bourdain actually fantasized about. And obviously, the all-organic-all-local-hippies are not depicted in a very flattering light (their leader Rose is a painfully obvious caricature of Alice Waters)... While there is violence and bloodshed galore in those pages, the story is fun and engaging (with a not-so-subtle criticism of the food industry's most damaging practices and nod at the small independent restaurateurs struggling to stay alive in that cut-throat world), and the artwork is stunning. You can also see Bourdain's love of food and cooking shine through, in the way characters talk about their boudain noir and enjoy foie gras. But really, he is just having fun here, writing about things he loved: organized crime stories and sushi.
Cheeky as hell, I just loved it!
For an insatiable Bourdain fangirl like myself, this was just pure fun: I'm sure chopping up customers (who got sushi etiquette wrong) or line cooks (who wanted to garnish their veal blanquette) into little pieces is something Bourdain actually fantasized about. And obviously, the all-organic-all-local-hippies are not depicted in a very flattering light (their leader Rose is a painfully obvious caricature of Alice Waters)... While there is violence and bloodshed galore in those pages, the story is fun and engaging (with a not-so-subtle criticism of the food industry's most damaging practices and nod at the small independent restaurateurs struggling to stay alive in that cut-throat world), and the artwork is stunning. You can also see Bourdain's love of food and cooking shine through, in the way characters talk about their boudain noir and enjoy foie gras. But really, he is just having fun here, writing about things he loved: organized crime stories and sushi.
Cheeky as hell, I just loved it!
NOW I get graphic novels! You just have to make them about food! Great satirical story of the "artistry" of food. Really could be a stand-in for any beloved occupation. Well worth a view.
Sloppy writing, horrible pace, bad world-building. Overall, not a very good graphic novel. Weak plot line that often borders on the absurd.
A very fun book. A look at what chefs are really like? Well, at least what they might like to be. 80) I hesitate to ever order California Roll again!
Goofy and fun, a pleasant send up of how our culture worships food and parody of purist asshats
The storyline was incredibly basic, a classic "Yojimbo" retelling with the focal point being food, as is Bourdain's specialty. There's a lot about the overall worldbuilding & specifically the general political logistics of the world that are unclear to me that I think the story could have benefited from, and left me with questions that will forever go unanswered... but I probably won't think about it too long.
The narrative seemed to be TRYING to come off, at some points, like a commentary on the exploitation of resources in other regions by Capitalist & Imperialist countries, and the depths people have to morally and ethically degrade themselves to be "successful" within such an exploitative imperialist system. The main antagonists seem like they COULD be allegories to the US's corrupt two-party system as well. But this is where I'm not as confident making assertions, because two barely fleshed-out characters who seem to be opposites with their own public personas but both hurt people and have their own insidious behind-the-scenes agendas that need to be taken down... could be an allegory for Literally Any Dichotomy. It's more likely that it's all still just a Yojimbo reference.
The narrative was confused about what it wanted itself at times, and shallow about its message at others. I mentioned the above messaging the narrative seemed to be "trying" to convey or that it "could" be conveying, but a lot of it was superficial, lacked any coherent thought, and was just nonsense trying to pass itself off as vaguely "Leftist" at times—especially when the small business owner is rambling off shallow communist points about "seizing the means of production" every so often. You OWN a business. You quite literally HAVE control over the means of production. I do not think you understand what those words mean.
And overall, the narrative was much more focused on Being The Aforementioned "Yojimbo" Retelling With Mafia Chefs than anything else. There's only so much that can be done when you try to fit a whole speculative fiction universe into a 160-page trade paperback and you only have the gimmick of Already Popular Cinematography to guide you.
It's a fun read if you like Anthony Bourdain or silly little comics about food with the occasional cartoonish gore here and there, but not really much to write home about otherwise. You may as well just go watch Yojimbo.
The narrative seemed to be TRYING to come off, at some points, like a commentary on the exploitation of resources in other regions by Capitalist & Imperialist countries, and the depths people have to morally and ethically degrade themselves to be "successful" within such an exploitative imperialist system. The main antagonists seem like they COULD be allegories to the US's corrupt two-party system as well. But this is where I'm not as confident making assertions, because two barely fleshed-out characters who seem to be opposites with their own public personas but both hurt people and have their own insidious behind-the-scenes agendas that need to be taken down... could be an allegory for Literally Any Dichotomy. It's more likely that it's all still just a Yojimbo reference.
The narrative was confused about what it wanted itself at times, and shallow about its message at others. I mentioned the above messaging the narrative seemed to be "trying" to convey or that it "could" be conveying, but a lot of it was superficial, lacked any coherent thought, and was just nonsense trying to pass itself off as vaguely "Leftist" at times—especially when the small business owner is rambling off shallow communist points about "seizing the means of production" every so often. You OWN a business. You quite literally HAVE control over the means of production. I do not think you understand what those words mean.
And overall, the narrative was much more focused on Being The Aforementioned "Yojimbo" Retelling With Mafia Chefs than anything else. There's only so much that can be done when you try to fit a whole speculative fiction universe into a 160-page trade paperback and you only have the gimmick of Already Popular Cinematography to guide you.
It's a fun read if you like Anthony Bourdain or silly little comics about food with the occasional cartoonish gore here and there, but not really much to write home about otherwise. You may as well just go watch Yojimbo.
Absolutely hilarious satire of a food obsessed LA hellscape. I found a lot of parts relatable as an Asian American who hates California rolls. This book is a reminder that a lot of times the best foods are the simplest. The most treasured foods are Jiro’s sushi and this nameless guy’s taco stand in North Hollywood. Bourdain is one of my favorites.
3 stars because the female characters aside from Rose basically were there as objects. I also didn’t get why Rose and the pretentious rival chef got together at the end. I think they should have fought to the death instead. They had 0 chemistry aside from heteronormative expectations.
3 stars because the female characters aside from Rose basically were there as objects. I also didn’t get why Rose and the pretentious rival chef got together at the end. I think they should have fought to the death instead. They had 0 chemistry aside from heteronormative expectations.
It was an interesting read- it pokes fun at foodies, foodie culture, etc. And has a nice touch of reverence for food done well. I like the homage to Jiro, too.