Review: The Nameless Restaurant by Tao Wong
Blurb:
There is a restaurant in Toronto.
Its entrance is announced only by a simple, unadorned wooden door, varnished to a beautiful shine but without paint, hidden beside dumpsters and a fire escape. There is no sign, no indication of what lies behind the door.
If you do manage to find the restaurant, the décor is dated and worn. Homey, if one were to be generous.
The service is atrocious, the proprietor a grouch. The regulars are worse: silent, brooding, and unfriendly to newcomers. There is no set menu, alternating with the whim and whimsy of the owner. The selection of wine and beer is sparse or non-existent at times, and the prices for everything outrageous.
There is a restaurant in Toronto that is magically hidden, whose service is horrible, but whose food is divine.
This is the story of the Nameless Restaurant.
From the bestselling author of The System Apocalypse and A Thousand Li comes The Nameless Restaurant, a cozy cooking fantasy novella perfect for fans of Travis Baldree's Legends & Lattes and Junpei Inuzuka's Restaurant to Another World.
Review:
The Nameless Restaurant is tagged as “A cozy cooking fantasy” and that is so on point. If you’ve seen Food Wars, it’s like a more wholesome Food Wars. The main character is so deeply passionate about how food is prepped in order to bring out the most perfect taste. If you’ve not seen Food Wars, this is probably a very confusing comparison.
The whole story takes place in this one little restaurant and follows the chef, the waitress and the customers through a dinner service. Quite straightforward and easy enough to follow, right? This being my first venture into Tao Wong’s writing, I was hoping it would give me a glimpse into his style without having to dive headfirst into the many, many books across a number of series. I was kind of right…? While you can definitely pick this up for a short and cozy read, there are also sections that feel like you’ve been dropped into a story that is much bigger than the book. Particularly when two customers are talking about some occurrences they caused at a hospital and a trio of nearby customers start chiming in on those same occurrences. Obviously there is a connection between the five that is beyond the confines of The Nameless Restaurant - and given the excerpt from A Gamer’s Wish that follows the end of the book, I suspect if I read those I’d get slightly more out of this novella.
Even without having whatever background The Nameless Restaurant would have liked me to have, I thought the story played out well. There was enough shared about each of the supernatural customers that I wanted to know a bit more about them. If you’ve ever been a regular somewhere, you know you only ever get glimpses of the people around through that very small window before they leave. And maybe you think of them again, maybe you don’t. (I still think about this one person I saw eat an onion on the bus and that was like a decade ago. Like just a raw onion. Who does that???) I think Tao really captured that feeling.
The one I really wanted to know more about was Mo Meng, our passionate and mysterious chef. There are little comments throughout about his age, his opinions, and a reflective bit on his experiences that just absolutely has me curious to know his story in full. I think there are due to be three books in the Hidden Dishes series so I’ll keep my fingers crossed my curiosity is satisfied by the end.
Now I do have some bones to pick with the blurb. The service is not atrocious, Kelly is by all measures very good at her job. And I’m not sure I agree the proprietor is a grouch, maybe just a man of few words. He lets his cooking speak for him. There is also the mention of the prices for everything being ‘outrageous’ and other than one comment on the matter, we don’t really circle back to that. I guess someone also throws down some actual gold coins but that could just be because of that one character. This might be one of those blurbs that doesn’t quite do the book inside justice.
There were some additions in the book that I think added to the whole vibe and feel of things. Images at the start of each chapter of the foods, illustrations of the restaurant and some of the first dinner customers we meet, and the recipes Mo Meng makes at the back. I made a comment during the Twitter debate to prologue or not to prologue that anything an author includes in their book I will read, whether it’s a murder confession or pancake recipe. Admittedly I didn’t think I was serious but the menu Mo Meng makes is fully available as recipes at the end of the story, and true to my word, I read them. Am I going to make them? No, I hate cooking. Do I like what they add to the book? Absolutely!
All in all, I think The Nameless Restaurant ticks a number of boxes. It’s enjoyable, even without the background to the wider world of Tao Wong’s series, and gives you a taste (no pun intended but please rimshot ‘ba-dum-ts’ as needed) of his writing that isn’t overwhelming. It’s just an all around cozy read.
