The Hundred-Foot Journey

Not for me.

It has the feel of a memoir. But as a work of fiction it was sort of puzzling. I kept waiting for Hassan to revisit the Indian cuisine of his youth, to revitalize old fashioned French styles with new flavors. The whole book feels like a lead up to this - from Hassan's apprenticeship to Madam Mallory, to his close friendship with Verdun, the master of traditional French styles. But instead Hassan fully assimilates into French cooking and culture, deciding to cook food simply in their natural juices, whatever that means. (It kind of sounded like spa cooking - steamed vegetables and fish with a sprinkling of herbs?) The book ends with winning a coveted third Michelin star. The award feels empty - we've already seen Mallory driven to grief and rage in search of it, and Verdun to suicide at it's loss. What is the point? For the book to close in celebration of Hassan's restaurant award just felt sad.

Also, the book has some really gross and pointless passages that overshadow the rest of the book, like “Papa was cursed, ever since he was a teenager, with an unattractive rash of blackheads, pimples, and boils across the broad expanse of his hairy back, and while Mummy was alive, the duty of popping the worst offenders fell on her. “Squeeze,” he yelled at Mehtab. “Squeeze.” Pap scrunched his face, Mehtab pinching the boil hard between her painted nails, the two of them yelping in surprise when the offending item suddenly exploded.” This is disturbing and gross.

When no less than Anthony Bourdain lauds this as the “easily the best novel set in the world of cooking ever” you go in with some pretty lofty expectations.

It starts strong with Hassan's family in Mumbai talking of carp-head soup, samosas on wax paper, pomegranate towers, charcoal fires and the food stalls in Bombay's Crawford market. Circumstance brings the family to a small French village called Lumiere. There they open a modest Indian restaurant not 100 feet from the Michelin rated Le Saule Pleurer run by the icy Madame Mallory.

Here you find the primary friction in the story. The rigour of the French tradition against home cooking built across generations. The upstart and eccentric versus the staid and somber or, as elsewhere noted, Slumdog meets Ratatouille.

The book should have meandered and ended here but instead Hassan goes off to Paris to open his own restaurant and Journey begins to read more like author Richard Morais showing off his immense knowledge of the culinary world. We get foodie inside baseball touching on Michelin ratings, celebrity chefs, diversification via endorsements, nouveau cuisine, staffing perils and labor laws. I's kind of depressing really, and reads like the culinary equivalent of an office drone being awarded a gold watch after decades of loyal service.

It takes a lot for me not to like a food novel and this one certainly has some wonderful moments where you can feast on the descriptions of food, but overall this book is disjointed and directionless. The center portion of the book is where you find the most delightful narrative. Here the main character is living opposite a fine French restaurant and coming into his own as a chef. I assume the upcoming film is a retelling of this portion of the novel, though I hope it is not as evil.

The end of the novel just spins off into crazy directions like an out of control firework. One that leaves you burned in the end.