Soko wa Chuumon no Ooi Ryouriten (“The Restaurant of Many Orders”) by Ando Yuki

You may not like me, but I love your food. (Delish Scans description)

I have just recently discovered how amazing story teller Ando Yuki is. Even though this manga is this short it has sufficient amount of pages to understand what’s going on.

The story itself is really simple. There is nothing complicated about it – no drama, no action, no villains or rivals in love. There is no space for such things. Hovewer, what I find charming about it is the way it is told.

The start of the story is really abrupt. We see a strange/unknown woman standing in front of a Wild Cat Bistro looking troubled and trying to figure out why did she come back. It’s as if we suddenly cut into existing story; or more like into a life of a random person. We don’t know anything about this woman as well as any other character in this story – their names, ages, … anything that is so easily given in most books and manga – except for what we see.

The woman, despite all, enter and we learn what she was tempted by. The food. Names of cousins make me wonder if they live in Japan or not?

The one who made her hesitate to enter is chief-owner of the bistro. She finds him scary since he keeps telling her how to truly savour food in a bossy way. The problem is he is like that only to her. Does he hate her?

It was short but there was nothing missing in it for me. I like that Ando Yuki left a (lot and lot of) space open for my imagination to run wild. The ending is somehow open but to me it’s clear what decision she will make in following days  I find what happened not really surprising, though I was a little amazed he stayed faithfull to his bossy ways to the end.

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The picture has nothing much to do with this manga. Except, it is what I imagined her dessert would be like since only the poor dessert was abandoned out of full course dinner. Actually, I couldn’t decide from 4 different types. I asked Summer to choose one for me but it made her hungry instead so she shamelessly run away to eat after commenting: “All look so yummy!” (T_T)

~~~ By Karra