The Restaurant of Lost Recipes – ARC Book Review

The Restaurant of Lost Recipes is the second book in the bestselling, mouth-watering Kamogawa Food Detectives series, for fans of Before the Coffee Gets Cold.

We all hold lost recipes in our hearts. A very special restaurant in Kyoto helps recreate them…

Chef Nagare and his daughter Koishi serve their customers more than delicious food at their Kamogawa Diner down a quiet street in Kyoto. They can help recreate meals from their customers’ most treasured memories. Through ingenious investigations, these “food detectives” untangle flavors and pore through old shopping lists to remake unique dishes from the past.

From the swimmer who misses his father’s lunchbox to the model who longs for fried rice from her childhood, each customer leaves the diner forever changed—though not always in the ways they expect…

A beloved bestseller in Japan, The Restaurant of Lost Recipes is a tender and healing novel that celebrates the power of community and delicious food.

This is the second book of the Kamogawa Food Detective series. I enjoyed reading the first book of the series and it was a privilege to get an invitation for the second book as well.

Cheif Nagare and his daughter Koishi runs the restaurant but their restaurant is just more than a restaurant that serves food. They specifically makes a meal and recreate that meal through their customer’s memories about the meal thus recounting the story about the meal. The customers involve a swimmer with hopes of becoming an Olympic swimmer to the famous supermodel who yearns for a fried rice that she loved during her childhood.

This book is no different from the first book–in fact it is exactly like the first book except maybe this time, the customers are different. The outline and the story overall are still the same as the previous one, so there are no special changes that you can see in this second book. There were often times when I thought that some parts of the story were repetitive but nonetheless just like the previous book, I enjoyed reading this book. Having lived in Japan and spending part of my childhood there, some of the Japanese food mentioned in the book made me think about my own experiences as a kid back in Japan and how I enjoyed eating those Japanese dishes. The description of those food and meals made my mouth water and I really wanted to try those dishes!

Overall, this was no different from the first book, yet it was enjoyable to read. Worth four stars in my opinion.

Many thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the ARC. The review is based on my honest opinion only.