Midnight Diner & Tokyo Stories
Popular and sweet series based on a Manga Comic about a 12 seat diner that is only open from 12 midnight to 7 A.M. Owned and operated by one man, “the master” who does all the Cooking with ingredients he has on hand. The master is a mystery and what is that scar on his face about but he is good natured, and always ready to give advice to his steady group of customers along with his tasty dishes. Each episode runs only about 25 minutes and includes charm along with simple recipes for the dishes that are also characters in the shows.
The Makanai Cooking For The Maiko House
Two young girls leave their hometown for kyoto to become apprentices at a geisha house. Only one of them makes the grade but the other one talks her way into becoming the cook for the house. Also based on a Manga, this is another sweet series mixing pathos with Food. Full of rich details on the routines of the young women including the costumes and styles of their lives along with all that cooking and food. You can almost smell the ingredients cooking and you can even get the recipes on line for all the dishes served.
Samurai Gourmet
Another short and sweet series mixing life and food. The episodes are only about 20 minutes long and are about a recently retired man played by Naoto Takenaka with a much younger wife (at first I thought it was his daughter) who needs to find something to do with all his free time. His solution is to take walks and to have lunch at various restaurants he stumbles upon. In his wanderings he images a fantasy Samurai who gives him inspiration and helpful advice on his daily journeys as Naoto remembers past events from his life brought on by what he is eating. It doesn't get more charming than this delightful series.
Kantaro The Sweet Tooth Salaryman
Maga is once again the source of a delicious Netflix series about food, this one is all on deserts. The plot is easy. A reliable and top notch salesman for a book publisher has a sweet tooth passion and is secretly the author of a popular blog on deserts and the cafes and restaurants that serve them. He rushes through his business visits to bookstores so he can get to well known and real cafes and restaurants where he can relish and sooth himself with gorgeous looking and tasting cakes, ices, and other delectables where he melts into orgasmic reactions to them. Played by the marvelous actor Matsuya Onoe who to my mind is a comic genius. His mentioned reactions reduced me to howls of laughter along with desires for what he's eating. There are also bizarre and hallucinatory fantasies in which the actors have giant cherries or melons for heads or blast off into outer-space while doing wild dance numbers. Again these are short pieces maybe 25 minutes each but brimming with pop color and images along with Onoe giving us some history about each desert and the famous cafes that serve them. It's hard to read Kantaro as a person. He has no interest in women or the female co-workers who drool after him like he drools after his beloved deserts, and his relationship with his mother in one episode is puzzling. He is gay or asexual? I do know that he loves and lusts after those deserts.
