In the nearly immortal words of Hanson: "Mmmnope".

The premise was alluring, but oh my stars, the execution... You know that scene from 𝘙𝘢𝘵𝘢𝘵𝘰𝘶𝘪𝘭𝘭𝘦 where Anton Ego the food critic sits down to try the eponymous dish made by Remy the rat and is instantly transported back to his grandmother's kitchen? Well, this book is that five-second flashback played out five or six different times (I lost count, honestly) at grrrrrrrrrreeeeaaaat length. There's a curmudgeonly old lady who is forced to admit that the food is good, there's a young woman who cries anytime she eats good food, and, of course, there's the rich a-hole who initially doesn't even acknowledge the cat (technical foul!) and is turned into a human being by a family epiphany brought about by... you guessed it: the food. Not to mention the umpteen dead people whose memory is honored/awakened/otherwise centered by the food.

I guess my beef (sorry not sorry) with this book is that food memory is a well-trodden literary path (*cough cough*, Marcel Proust), and this does not do much to add to the trope. It just sort of wallows in it, without elevating it in any significant way. I can see why it was a best-seller in Japan, as it is a) completely non-challenging and b) a paean to Kyoto cuisine. But for me, it kind of read like a weepy version of 𝘐𝘳𝘰𝘯 𝘊𝘩𝘦𝘧 and nobody needs that.