The Hundred-Foot Journey

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.