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A review by apechild
The Restaurant of Love Regained by Ito Ogawa
3.0
This is a quiet, slow moving kind of story, where not a lot happens to be honest, but there is something about that, like the slow, careful cooking process. This really is about the love of cooking and good food, so if you're into things like Chocolat, Like Water for Chocolate and other cooking fiction I can't think of, then this is for you - Japanese style!
Rinko comes back from work as a waitress and finds her appartment completely empty. Her boyfriend has taken everything and abandoned her. She is so shocked, so speechless, that she literally isn't able to speak for pretty much the rest of the book and has to communicate by writing things down. She moves back to the sleepy little mountain village she grew up in - with the twin peaks mountains, referred to as breasts on several occasions; so this is all about going back to her estranged mother. Her mother is a mess in the kitchen, and a lively woman who runs a bar and as soon as her daughter left 15 years ago, got herself a pet pig. Rinko ends up looking after this pig, and opening up a little restaurant which she names The Snail. She only takes one customer a day (or a group) and cooks the most amazing meals for them. The process of cooking and the thought behind the food is described in detail. That's most of the book, until the end when her mother admits that she is dying of cancer, and is going to get married to her childhood sweetheart. Mother and daughter reconcile of a sorts, and the mother asks that they eat the pig, Hermes. Rinko with the help of friends slaughters the pig, and there is great detail about what all the various pig bits are used for. This may seem like a grim ending to the story - and then they ate the spoilt little pet of fifteen years - but I think it also shows true appreciation and care of the food. This pig was spoiled rotten and had a great life. Rinko then takes part in the slaughter, so she's fully aware of where the food comes from, active and accepting that for this food, a life must be taken. And then nothing is wasted, so the death was not in vain in any respect. Which seems a lot better than getting a slab of meat out of the freezer, never given a second thought to where its come from.
Rinko comes back from work as a waitress and finds her appartment completely empty. Her boyfriend has taken everything and abandoned her. She is so shocked, so speechless, that she literally isn't able to speak for pretty much the rest of the book and has to communicate by writing things down. She moves back to the sleepy little mountain village she grew up in - with the twin peaks mountains, referred to as breasts on several occasions; so this is all about going back to her estranged mother. Her mother is a mess in the kitchen, and a lively woman who runs a bar and as soon as her daughter left 15 years ago, got herself a pet pig. Rinko ends up looking after this pig, and opening up a little restaurant which she names The Snail. She only takes one customer a day (or a group) and cooks the most amazing meals for them. The process of cooking and the thought behind the food is described in detail. That's most of the book, until the end when her mother admits that she is dying of cancer, and is going to get married to her childhood sweetheart. Mother and daughter reconcile of a sorts, and the mother asks that they eat the pig, Hermes. Rinko with the help of friends slaughters the pig, and there is great detail about what all the various pig bits are used for. This may seem like a grim ending to the story - and then they ate the spoilt little pet of fifteen years - but I think it also shows true appreciation and care of the food. This pig was spoiled rotten and had a great life. Rinko then takes part in the slaughter, so she's fully aware of where the food comes from, active and accepting that for this food, a life must be taken. And then nothing is wasted, so the death was not in vain in any respect. Which seems a lot better than getting a slab of meat out of the freezer, never given a second thought to where its come from.