The Ex-Boyfriend's Favourite Recipe Funeral Committee

Translated by Yuka Maeno

There is a small cafe in Tokyo where something unusual is brewing...

Twenty-nine-year-old Momoko has been tragically dumped. She thought she and her boyfriend were in love. He even took her to a love hotel, where she thought he was going to propose. Instead, he dumps her. 

Momoko does what many broken-hearted people do—she gets incredibly drunk. So drunk, that she passes out in an empty cafe. Eager to tell her story to anyone who will listen, she pours her heart out to a curious manager and the sole other customer in the cafe, a monk who trains at a temple nearby. When she starts to describe how she doted on her boyfriend, how he loved her cooking, the manager decides to indulge her, and allows her to slip into the kitchen, and cook up her ex’s favorite dish: a warm, delightful butter chicken curry. Soon, as Momoko finishes telling her story and as they all eat her dish, she realizes this combination of cooking and sharing has healed her heart in a way nothing else can.

The manager has an idea—what if they started doing this regularly, inviting in patrons to hear stories about breakups, heartbreaks, and tragic endings, and cook up dishes that meant something to the relationship? Like an unconventional therapy group, the “Ex-Boyfriend’s Favourite Recipe Funeral Committee” is formed, with Momoko at the helm.

Inspired by the author’s actual experience working at a café where she posted a recipe called “My Ex’s Favourite Butter Chicken Curry,” The Ex-Boyfriend’s Favourite Recipe Funeral Committee is a magical, soul-nourishing comfort read that is part confessional, part group therapy, part recovery, part cookbook, for anyone who has loved and lost and loved again.