Movies about women in crisis who find their mojo through the restaurant/food business are a thriving subgenre in Japanese films, from Naoko Ogigami's Japanese-soul-food-in-Helsinki hit "Kamome Shokudo" ("Seagull Restaurant," 2006) to Mitsuhiro Mihara's "Shiawase no Kaori" ("Flavor of Happiness," 2008) and Akira Ogata's "Nonchan Noriben" (2009).
The heroines of these films, even the talented cooks, undergo an arduous struggle before they can make it as a professional. (All, for some reason, learn tricks of the trade from brusque, if kindly, older men, from how to make a decent cup of coffee to a picture-perfect set lunch.) That is, the narrative arc is that of dozens of local zero-to-hero dramadies.
Mai Tominaga, an award-winning animator who made her feature debut in 2006 with the delightfully fairy-tale-ish "Wool 100 %," uses this arc in her latest film, "Shokudo Katatsumuri" ("Rinco's Restaurant"), but bends it in an imaginatively different direction.