Immediately after reading this book, I looked up the nearest place I could get my hands on hand-pulled noodles, so in that regard this has been an absolute success. I have never had them before but I am somehow craving them anyway.
I picked up this book because it’s been so highly recommended on Cannonball Reads, and I do appreciate that because I’m not sure it would have crossed my radar otherwise. For such a short book there’s a lot packed into the story – themes of personhood, citizenship, family, and belonging. The four main characters all have diverse backgrounds which influences why they choose to start the restaurant and how they handle the situation with the review-bombing. The cozy community feeling is completely charming.
On the other hand, what ends up happening is the actual opening and running of the restaurant, which I was very interested in seeing how the characters would navigate, is not really focused on. Since this was something I had been intrigued by when reading the premise, I ended up disappointed that the the lead-up and opening day is mostly glossed over. I think with a bit longer story we could have also gotten more of a sense of how the store fit into the neighborhood and how customers reacted to learning that it was robot-owned and operated.
