Or more accurately, a weird mix of Japanese food porn and feels.
When I was younger, my parents used to bring us to Johor Bahru every weekend. If the idea of waking up at 7am every Saturday after a night of gaming doesn’t thrill you, don’t worry: I hated it too. I would’ve rather been left to my own devices, especially since I didn’t really get any direct benefits from cheap petrol and cheaper groceries.
That is, until we discovered a coffeeshop that ended up being my family’s favourite. My parents liked this Penang-style Hokkien mee (or prawn mee as it’s known this side of the border), while I discovered beef noodles. I would’t say discovered, because I’d tried it before in Singapore (to middling delight).
The broth here, however, was completely clear — and something special. Extremely beefy but also pretty light and not at all herbacious, it probably suited my tastes as a developing pre-teen perfectly. The noodles also got me hooked on spring onions, so there’s that.
I began to dream of the beef noodles even before we reached the weekend, and they’re probably the one thing that made the Johor Bahru trips tolerable (I didn’t mention the inescapable jams earlier, did I?). Eventually, the shop owner stopped selling it and switched to wanton mee: because too many locals were Buddhists, he said. Regardless, it crushed my soul and permanently weaned me off the trips (yes seriously — we never found anything better).
I’m mentioning beef noodle soup because it’s exactly the premise of Midnight Diner — that is, the transcendental nature of food memories. Of course there’s a little bit of that typical Japanese reverence for ingredients and culture attached to certain dishes. Think oyakodons, or father-and-son bowls made out of chicken and egg on rice, to signify a budding romance between a man and a single mother.
A different scenario plays out at the titular inn every episode, with a variety of recurring cast members setting the backdrop for the melodrama. Of course, the fact that Master, the proprietor of the Midnight Diner, can seemingly cook everything and anything (Japanese at least) doesn’t really matter. Nor does it matter that sometimes, people aren’t looking for life-changing meals at a diner at 3am — they just want some grub. The greasier, the better.
The food in Midnight Diner, at the very least, looks pretty damn good. I guess a part of that has to do, at least, with the precision and artistry of Japanese food in general. Instead of classic diner schlock (and gratuitous scenes of eggs or bacon sizzling a la typical American diners), everything, including sausages, look like they were prepared with plenty of thought in mind.
All that aside, the show is every bit about the rose-tinted glasses that we use to view our food memories. A once-poverty-stricken family’s appreciation of butter rice (butter… and rice) becomes that near imperceptible red thread that leads to a reunion between estranged lovers, decades later. Remember what I said about feels? The show uses its opening to underscore every emotional climax — which I’m not complaining about, because as the ever-so-familiar strings, flute* and crooning drone of Tsunekichi Suzuki seem apt for every occasion the show portrays.
I’ll always remember certain foods: steamed chicken, which my mom made for me growing up, and what I ate almost every day on exchange; lamb biryani, while heavily jet-lagged and cold — my first taste of British food (not great) after setting off on said exchange; Kiseki trips and Mr Bean, for one, to speak of days that have now past; and, I think, butter chicken in Berlin — for the present, when I could possibly first say I felt really, really sure.
You’ve probably just glanced to the slider on the right to see when this ends. Good. They’re my food memories after all — and probably more than a little boring to everyone else. Which is why I can’t really put a finger on the appeal of Midnight Diner. I’d seen some fancy descriptions bandied about about Midnight Diner being an aria for the human condition (and other similarly nice-sounding, but ultimately vague platitudes).
At the end of the day, it is what is it: a cute little serial that uses everyday food to tell stories about everyday people. With a pretty killer, if short, playlist.
*I’m not good with music. It sounds like a reedy wind instrument, but what it is really isn’t as important as what it makes you feel — heavily, heavily nostalgic and more than a little melancholic.
