Book Review: The Kamogawa Food Detectives by Hisashi Kashiwai

In an assuming shopfront down a Kyoto back alley lies not only a very special restaurant, but an attached detective agency that specializes in recreating meals from their clienteles’ memories. The Kamogawa Diner itself is a marvel, a place of seemingly simple, inexpensive food that still manages to knock the socks off of all of its patrons. Nagare Kamogawa is the head chef, a widowed former police detective whose investigative experience and keen sense of observation allow him to hunt down ingredients and cooking methods from only the most uncertain of recollections and clues. His daughter Koishi not only runs the restaurant but also performs the agency’s administrative work, including gathering information from their often very vague customers.

Due to the Kamogawas’ reluctance to advertise, they are often sought out only by those desperate enough to turn over any stone in order to recreate meals that exist only in memory. Koishi, who is in her mid-30s, sometimes does not understand what drives clients to their doors, in one case saying to a patron:

‘I don’t mean to be rude, Mr Yamamoto, but I have to say that this is a pretty odd request. This sushi you’re describing doesn’t sound very tasty at all! There are plenty of Kyoto restaurants that serve incredible mackerel sushi these days – but all you care about is this weird version of yours.’

 

‘You’re still young, aren’t you? All you care about is eating the tastiest food you can. Get to my age and you’ll realize that nostalgia can be just as vital an ingredient. I want to eat the mackerel sushi that made me so happy back then, that’s all.’

Food, as any aesthete knows, isn’t just about nourishing the body. Certain meals are inextricably linked in our minds to the circumstances in which they were served, often evoking memories of eras we wish to recapture. And that is what most of the customers who come to the agency are in search of, a reminder of hope and, sometimes, closure, that they most vividly identify with a meal from a time of strong emotion.

Divided into six chapters named after the meals the clients seek to faithfully replicate, each case is original in both memory and in the seeker’s motivations. Whether it’s a former colleague of Nagare’s wanting to taste his late wife’s cooking one last time before embarking on a new life, or a teenage girl looking to recreate a meal she once had with her beloved and now declining grandfather, each case is unique, with each offering a glimpse into a different aspect of the human condition. No less impressive is Nagare’s detective work, as he strings together the disparate clues with a skill rivaling Sherlock Holmes’, with Koishi as his able Watson.

As translated by Jesse Kirkwood, this charming book is definitely not one to read while hungry! Here is only one description of a set menu offered to a new customer by Koishi herself:

‘Starting from the top left: thinly sliced Akashi sea bream sashimi, with a prickly ash bud and miso dressing – to be enjoyed with the ponzu dipping sauce. Miso-glazed Kamo aubergine. Maizuru cockles sandwiched between slices of myoga ginger. Gizzard shad marinated in sweet vinegar, served in a miniature sushi roll. Fried matsutake, conger eel grilled two ways, Manganji sweet pepper tempura, abalone picked in Kyoto-style sweet white miso and then grilled. Fish paste noodles, Kurama-style local chicken, smoked mackerel with a pine nut stuffing. Fresh soy milk curd and vegetables pickled with red perilla. Everything’s bite-sized, so it should be nice and easy to eat. I’ll bring you some eel-topped rice once that’s finished cooking. Please, enjoy the meal!’

With a clear mastery and fondness of Japanese, and specifically Kyoto, food and culture, The Kamogawa Food Detectives is the coziest of mystery novels, as the Kamogawas solve their customers’ problems through their ingenious recreations of dishes, sometimes with a very necessary twist. Along the way, they dispense excellent advice, changing lives for the better. Little wonder that this gem of a detective novel is a bestseller in Japan. I’m only glad it’s been made available for the English-speaking public now too.