Midway through the film version of The Solitary Gourmet, central character and titular solo eater Goro Inogashira realizes he’s being watched. He’s about to dig into an assortment of Korean dishes when he glances up. Nearly a dozen women look on excitedly, waiting for the salaryman to dig in. In the story they’ve prepared the food for him. Yet at this moment, we the audience see ourselves in their glee anticipating how a middle-aged man will react to tasty grub.
It’s one of several meta moments sprinkled throughout The Solitary Gourmet (Kodoku No Gourmet in Japanese), which arrived in Japanese theaters last week. It’s the cinematic version of the television show of the same name that has been getting stomachs rumbling since 2012. It finds Inogashira (played by Yutaka Matsushige, who also makes his directorial debut here) going to restaurants, eating an assortment of items, and offering his rapturous commentary on them.
Food-centric TV is a global entertainment staple, whether it’s a Japanese variety show crew digging into local treats or an American rapper indulging in the whole culinary spectrum. Even in this context though, the success of Solitary Gourmet is staggering. Based off the long-running manga created by Masayuki Qusumi, the program has become arguably TV Tokyo’s biggest hit of the last decade. It has lasted for over ten seasons — the latest adopting an omnibus style, with a different character criss-crossing through Inogashira’s world — and resulted in numerous year-end specials bringing the main character across the archipelago…and beyond.
Its impact can be registered in the real world too. Restaurants featured in the show often attract huge lines after their episodes air (source: me, standing in a lot of these lines over the last decade of my life). Owing to it being aired after midnight every Friday, Solitary Gourmet became a foundational text of the “yashoku terror” genre, referring to works of media that make people want to eat even though it’s late at night. Other shows and properties have spoofed it over the years.
The film version of Solitary Gourmet isn’t so much a grand leap narratively — despite some cinematic dressing, this is still about Inogashira eating various things and commenting on them. Rather, it’s a best case example of fanservice.
Solitary Gourmet has never been about the plot, if that’s even how you would describe the typical format of an episode. Inogashira does his job, and then he gets hungry. That’s it. The movie attempts to thread a slightly larger narrative through its center, around the salaryman trying to procure the ingredients to make a soup that an older client based in Paris remembers from his childhood. This prompts a video-game-like fetch quest to make the delicacy, but even that’s just an excuse to fling the suited central character to unlikely locales a film budget allows for and eat local delicacies.
Matsushige, as director, does offer some twists to the formula. He puts Inogashira through genuine danger multiple times during the film, shifting the mood from “wow, those noodles look tasty!” to “oh my god are they going to kill him?” While eating remains central to Solitary Gourmet, the movie is more a celebration of Inogashira the character, throwing him into unlikely situations and seeing how he fares.
It makes for a work that is, in the best possible way, focused on existing fans. I count myself among that demographic — I joined the Goro gang at the start of the second season — so for me the idea of extending Solitary Gourmet into a feature-length film was thrilling rather than head scratching. Still, I have a hard time imagining someone who hasn’t followed the series being pulled into this, especially as it reveals itself to be a self-aware work every bit as interesting commenting on itself — and on the folks like me eating it up.
This isn’t the appetizer for Solitary Gourmet. Rather, it’s the extravagant entree for those happy to gorge on the show. The best parts of the film end up feeling like nods to the fandom surrounding it (including a detour into South Korea, a country where Solitary Gourmet has especially found love) alongside meta jokes about the TV show itself. These bits deliver the biggest laughs, and elevate the film into something particularly entertaining for those familiar with its world.
Solitary Gourmet the movie is not a work that stands alone, but rather a celebration of the show and its unlikely success. It underlines that everything about the series is not the equivalent of a lazy news program segment where reporters eat food and simply describe it as “delicious.” Solitary Gourmet offers simple comforts via the character of Inogashira, who is easy to connect with and ultimately a delight to follow, whether he’s slurping ramen or suddenly shipwrecked on an island. While the latter might be rare, everyone pulled into his world can relate to being hungry and craving something exquisite. Solitary Gourmet allows us to hunger together.
