Thank you for giving me an opportunity to read and review this book that I really enjoyed. I have attached my review below.

In The Menu of Happiness, acclaimed Japanese author Hisashi Kashiwai pens down a heartwarming collection of stories set in the Kamogawa Diner, a tiny restaurant tucked away in the streets of Kyoto. The story centers around a father-daughter duo Nagare Kamogawa, a former police detective and his spirited daughter, Koishi.

They use their 'detective' skills to recover and recreate long lost recipes and dishes that are meaningful to their clients, remembered only through their hazy memories and emotions. Koishi and Nagare, while central to the book, remain quietly in the background of each narrative while the diners and their nostalgic stories take the centre stage.

Among the diners we come across Sakyo Kataoka a contemporary dancer, Nobuo Matsubayashi who crafts lacquerware, a pianist Yumiko Maezaki, Shuji Kosaka who runs a small hotel, Takayuki Jojima who is a Managing Director working in food service industry and a romantic fiction author Miyuki Akikawa, each searching for closure from their past. Their stories explore how food is deeply tied to our memories, our sense of self and the people we've lost or grown distant from.

This is the third book after The Kamagowa Food Detectives and The Restaurant of Lost Recipes written by Hisashi Kashiwai and translated by Jesse Kirkwood. The premise is simple, yet profoundly touching. Kashiwai’s prose is gentle, understated and filled with a deep empathy for his characters. With each culinary mystery, readers are reminded of the emotional weight and nostagia that seemingly ordinary meals can carry and how their flavors become bridges to the past where food can offer healing and comfort.

I love this series! Such heartwarming cosy stories that follow a somewhat predictable but comforting formula!

I can’t help but devour these books every time I read one and then I immediately regret not savouring it- much like the guests at the Kamogawa diner I’m sure!

A book full of hope in finding food dishes that created happiness for the characters finding them.
The chapters are repetitive in style but the stories behind finding a specific food dish was interesting.

I did enjoy the book, but found the repetitive style a bit too much. 4 stars.

Thanks to Netgalley and Pan Macmillan for letting me read this arc.