I rarely buy random books at the bookstore, but I was at the Barnes & Noble in Akron, IL, and this one piqued my interest. I love books with recipes and most of the ones I’ve read have been cozy mysteries. I especially love Diane Mott Davidson’s Goldy Bear series.
However, this book is not a mystery. It is a tale of loss and grief. The book opens when the main character, Momoko, stumbles into a drunk into a cafe after being dumped at a love hotel. She is comforted by the cafe owner, Iori, and a monk, Hozumi, who hangs out there regularly. However, her healing does not truly begin until she cooks her ex-boyfriend’s favorite chicken curry.
Seeing the healing that cooking the curry brought her, she, along with Iori and Hozumi, formed the Ex Boyfriend’s Favorite Recipe Funeral Committee as a way to help others heal. An interesting collection of people comes into the cafe in search of healing. Each of them brings their story of heartbreak and a favorite recipe from their departed (though not necessarily dead) loved one. And cooking and talking brings the same healing for each of them that it brought for Momoko.
We even get to hear Hozumi’s story of family estrangement and the importance of star-shaped pizza and Iori’s heartache over being one of the beautiful people. At the end of the book, however, we see that Momoko has truly healed as she understands that the curry she originally named after her ex is hers and that making it for herself is an act of self-love.
This book was originally written in Japanese, and there were some words that sent me to Google looking for their meaning, but all in all it was an easy read, and I loved that it covered losses other than grief.