It happens like this: you turn on something and from the very first episode you understand that this will be your personal series of the year. So it was with “True Detective” and “Atlanta” – a perfect hit in the mood, a sense of novelty (almost forgotten), vivid emotions that have accumulated somewhere inside and have long demanded an exit …
“Samurai Gourmet” made my 2022. I will even say more: it made me a little happier and fuller as a person. An 8.1 on IMDB just doesn’t show up.
What is it regarding? – One Japanese grandfather retired and fell in love with delicious food …
The protagonist Takeshi Katsumi retires. He is 60 years old, of which 38 he was a fierce workaholic. On his first non-working day, he simply gets lost. What to do? What are these so-called free people doing? Takeshi finds the answer in two things: samurai and gourmet food. Entering a simple old restaurant, he discovers the magic of delicious food.
“The magic of delicious food” is even nice to say, I want to say this phrase once more and once more. From series to series, Takeshi finds himself some new restaurant or cafe and sits in it, tasting different dishes and drinks. Each story is a small enlightenment (almost spiritual), and delicious food leads to it. At 60, Takeshi suddenly learns to enjoy simple things.
Watching an elderly Japanese dive into Nirvana while drinking beer and skewers is an incredible thrill.
The actor conveys emotions in such a way, he is so charming and childishly innocent that you instantly begin to perceive him as a friend. I don’t really like the word “tube” (it’s depreciated a lot), but “Samurai Gourmet” is an incredibly, frantically tube spectacle. Each dish, each situation in the restaurant plunges the hero into the past, reveals some long-forgotten memory from childhood or youth. Of course, before watching it is better to stock up on something tasty yourself, otherwise you will salivate. Takeshi even eats cold food from the canteen as if it were his last dinner on Earth – he groans and squints enviably.
And there is also an incredibly cool samurai.
More precisely, a ronin, a wandering war from the era Sengoku spear. He is the alter ego of the protagonist. If Takeshi is a sweet, but very shy and too kind-hearted old man, then Ronin is a cheeky rebel who appears in order to help Takeshi become a better person. Basically, bolder and more courageous, but sometimes in order to understand some poetic wisdom.
Thanks to his inner samurai and delicious food, Takeshi becomes a kind of gourmet Buddha. He enjoys every moment with the fantastic power of a child, he learns something new every day and catches such highs that you yourself get goosebumps.