Book Review: The Hundred-Foot Journey

Book cover of The Hundred-Foot Journey. Photo / Supplied

The Hundred-Foot Journey by Richard C. Morais
Allen & Unwin $35

I enjoy books about cooking and culinary matters, be they factual or novels. Or, at least, I did. Now? Now I will be a little more circumspect in my selection of such books, for reasons I will make clear.

The journey of the title of Richard C. Morais' first novel takes trainee chef Hassan Haji from his father's restaurant, the Maison Mumbai, across a village street in France to train with the legendary Madame Mallory in her famous Le Saule Pleureur restaurant.

The journey may have been short in distance but was long on time, encompassing as it did the rows between the good Madame and the rambunctious Abbas Haji, Hassan's father, and the battles between the competing restaurateurs. Sabotage, loud music and battles at the local market provide entertaining reading.

Hassan's early days in India, his upbringing as part of a family steeped in Indian cuisine (street food, in this case) and his training in classical French cuisine with Mallory set the stage for his eventual desire to become a world-class chef.

There are gaps in the narrative, however - four years in this restaurant, five years in that - that might have provided evidence for the distinction of Hassan's three Michelin stars.

What lets the novel down are Morais' descriptive passages and his figures of speech.

Madame Mallory is depicted incongruously in one instance as a monster, "a slashing and scarring across the eyes, and I saw the cruelty that lurked there too, all tightly bound under [a] feathered Tyrolean hat".

Other passages groan under the weight of adjectives - "a sea of white tables and long-stemmed irises ... Baroque murals and rococo mirrors, with tall windows offering a panoramic view of Paris dressed in expensive pearl strings".

Morais leaves nothing to the imagination. Especially when it comes to food, where he excels.

What could be more stomach-turning than the mental image of a kitchen apprentice neatly splitting an okra, and then "using his finger to smear a lurid red chili paste on the vegetable's white inner thighs"?

There are, in a fish market in Mumbai, apparently, "trays of squid, the skin purple and glistening like the tip of a penis". (Stop reading now if you're feeling squeamish.) There are descriptions of gourmet dishes, including "paper-thin slivers of grilled goose liver layered delicately between the pudenda-pink meat of fresh-water crustaceans".

There's more, but you get the idea. Even the sun does not escape the food comparisons, variously described as the colour of mango, chili and saffron. Harmless enough, perhaps, but suddenly I've lost my appetite for culinary novels. I rather hope Richard C. Morais has too.

Phoebe Falconer is a Herald columnist.