Grand Maison Tokyo Special

What's next for Grand Maison Tokyo?

Synopsis: Set right after the pandemic, the special goes straight into how the restaurant and its remaining members, Rinko, Kyono, Shohei, Serita, and Moe, have had to keep the business afloat since Obana and Aizawa took off at the end of the series. Kanna now works for NEX Holdings, the investment firm that made a capital alliance with Grand Maison Tokyo and basically bought rights to anything made by Chef Rinko. With the firm's interference, the restaurant has had to resort to using frozen ingredients, selling mail-order meals, and publishing online recipes. And although it is still open, the quality of the food took a nosedive, making the restaurant lose all three Michelin stars by the end of the pandemic.
But what happened to Obana? He disappeared after the end of the series and resurfaced in Kyoto as a sous chef at an experimental restaurant called Meilleur Kyoto, which has the same concept as the original Grand Maison Tokyo - to bring out the best in Japanese ingredients and classic French cuisine. Rinko finds him there, but he doesn't want to come back. He's also abandoned his promise to collect stars with her outside Japan. Instead, he's made it his mission to permanently close the restaurant he once built before moving back to Paris to start his new restaurant with Aizawa as his sous chef.
What I loved:
THE CAST. It's amazing how they got pretty much everyone back - from the staff at GMT, Chef Tango, and Linda. I love Obana's new blond hair (although let's face it KimuTaku always looks good in anything). It's well acted as expected, and I would say sometimes even better than the original series. The new additions, the nonchalant Chef Yuasa and the annoying President Akashi, fit right in.
For some, the acting and the cinematography may feel subdued or cold compared to the original, but that just might be the point. When they first opened the restaurant, they were all wide-eyed dreamers and even a bit naive. Shohei, Serita, and Moe were in their very early 20s, while Rinko, Obana, Kyono, and even Aizawa were hellbent on getting the stars and moving past the contamination incident. But in the special, we see them exhausted from weathering the storms of the pandemic. So everyone feels more mature, even jaded, which makes the acting more natural and easier to empathize with them (because we made it through the pandemic, too). Thankfully, it still has its light and heartwarming moments, with Rinko and Obana name-calling each other at every opportunity, the young chefs standing up for the restaurant, and Linda actually letting out a genuine laugh for a change.
What I liked:
The story was fast-paced, and didn't waste time on indulgent flashbacks from the series. The writers were confident that we would watch it with enough background knowledge. They kept the original OST which should bring some nostalgia to the fans but still hits hard at the right moments. I like the overall direction that they took with the narrative. It's easy to criticize Kyono and Rinko's decisions for the restaurant, but what would any of us (normal people, not geniuses like Obana) have done in their shoes?
Akashi could have been a cartoonish villain a bit like Eto in the series, but instead he poses a real challenge to the chefs. A pure capitalist, he couldn't care less about the quality of the food and the time and effort it takes to prepare the meals. He invests purely for profit, but ironically, wastes time, food, and money in the process. A great subtle callback to a lesson from Minegishi the game hunter - that as chefs it is their duty to honor the lives they take by making the most of the ingredients, not wasting them for fun. So it's pretty easy to see that none of the main chefs or even Linda would ever work with someone like that, and that Rinko and Kyono only signed with him because they were truly desperate during the pandemic. In true Obana fashion, he comes up with the solution and the plan is revealed. The final scene brings us smoothly to the opening of Grand Maison Paris.
What I would have liked more of:
-Additional screen time for Linda, Tango, and Aizawa. I understand that would have probably given the ending away a lot faster though, but they're such screen stealers I just can't get enough of them.
-More backstory on Yuasa. I feel like he came out of nowhere and had this connection to Obana and Shohei.
-Focus on the food. The new dishes aren't bad at all, but I would have loved to see more of what the revamped Grand Maison Tokyo had to offer, while still bringing back old dishes the goat's (pun intended) milk bavarois. But the menu from Meilleur Kyoto looked really good, especially that appetizer with the ice sauce, the slow-cooked duck, and the tofu pain perdu / French toast. I also wanted to try the dish that Tango served at Gaku, and Moe's inverted strawberry shortcake.
-A few more scenes about personal lives: I know this was never a romantic series and I actually appreciate how the original didn't go in that direction beyond Kyono's confession at the end of episode 7. There were details (I probably missed more because I based it all on Google Translate and some haphazard translations from my sister) about Shohei's marriage and baby and a few others sprinkled here and there, like hints about Moe and Serita, Kanna and Yuasa. I'm sure Kyono and Rinko would have probably ended up together if they were a little less professional, though they're pretty much parents to the young chefs and staff. They practically begged Tango to adopt their children when they thought they were losing their 'house' for good.

All in all, I found it really enjoyable as a fan of the original show. It gives just enough to bridge the gap between the show and the movie, but now I have to wait in agony again. If anyone has seen the special and would like to correct me on some things, please feel free to reply!

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