By Kelsey Richards

Thayne Branch Library

“What’s the one dish you’d do anything to taste just one more time?” Is it a dish made by a loved one who has passed on? Or a dish your mother served that made you feel loved and cared for?

Perhaps your life is a challenge right now, and you just want a taste of a dish you had as a carefree child.

If you are lucky, you’ll come across the advertisement in a food magazine, “Kamogawa Diner – Kamogawa Detective Agency – We Find Your Food,” and find your way to the unmarked restaurant on a narrow backstreet in Kyoto, Japan.

Inside, clients are greeted by the chef, Nagare, a retired, widowed police detective, and Koishi, his 30-something daughter, who conducts interviews and helps cook.

Clients describe a significant but hazily remembered meal they want to be recreated. Their memories include other past questions, such as “Who was…?” “Where did ….?” and “What happened to…?”

Once Koishi has taken notes on all relevant and seemingly unrelated details surrounding the dish, Nagare, the crack investigator, goes to work.

When clients return to Kamogawa Diner, Nagare has meticulously tracked down the ingredients, as well as the experience itself. Nagare and Koishi carefully stage an authentic environment using seating, sounds, smells, and more to recreate the “feel” of the client’s memory so they are in the right frame of mind to taste the dish.

Through the experience, some clients relive their memory and are finally able to move on, while for others, it dispels the myths of the past or reveals a truth they were unable to see before.

“The Kamogawa Food Detectives” is an off-beat mystery series that was first published in Japan in 2013. It has been translated into English by Jesse Kirkwood and is now available in the United States.

There are six different stories in this book, each one arranged in two chapters. One is where the client comes to the diner and detective agency and shares their memory, and the other is where the client returns to sample the recreated dish and learns the answers to their questions about the past.

You won’t find dead bodies or scandalous affairs, but you will find wistful tales, detailed recreations of recipes, and “taste therapy” as clients come to terms with the past.

“The Kamogawa Food Detectives” is available as a book at libraries across Lincoln County and as an eAudiobook in the Libby app.