A Restaurant with Many Problems
問題のあるレストラン
Storyline
The whole story, ending included.
Women who left a harassing company open a rooftop bistro directly opposite its flagship, with staff the working world has pushed aside.
Tamako Tanaka, thirty-two, is helping a large restaurant company, Like Dining Service, open its flagship bistro in Omotesando when her closest friend from school, Satsuki, is made the scapegoat for a food-poisoning scandal. In front of the senior staff, the company's president, Taro Amaki, orders Satsuki to strip and apologise, and she complies. It is sexual abuse, committed in the open with colleagues looking on. Satsuki goes home to Fukui, leaving Tamako her late father's recipes. Tamako drenches the men responsible in iced water, the police are called, and she leaves the company.
She takes over the rooftop of a shabby building in Ura-Harajuku, directly opposite the company's new restaurant, and opens Bistro fou, serving pot-au-feu from Satsuki's recipe. Her staff are people the working world has pushed aside: Yumi, a Tokyo University graduate who calculates costs faster than anyone and cannot find a job; Chika, a gifted cook so afraid of people that she speaks through her phone, who turns out to be Amaki's daughter and spent her childhood cooking for a mother shut in her room; Kyoko, Tamako's school friend, fighting her husband for custody of their son; Nanami, a sommelier who drifts between jobs and was once a lawyer; and Haiji, a Paris-trained pastry chef whose feminine manner has made one workplace after another unbearable. Airi joins them from the company, where she smiled her way through her superiors' harassment until a colleague stalked her and, when she turned him down, attacked her, and the company hushed it up. Across the street the flagship's chef is Makoto Monji, Tamako's former boyfriend, and the two kitchens compete.
The bistro finds its customers. Satsuki returns to Tokyo with the man who has asked to marry her and decides to sue Amaki, with Nanami as her lawyer. A manager Amaki has humiliated leaks the case to a weekly magazine; the story spreads as a blur of fact and rumour, Amaki resigns and the flagship closes. Monji, insulted by Amaki's hollow apology, hits him and is fired. Then a spoon dropped by a customer falls from the roof to the street, someone complains that the bistro should not be operating at all, and the building's owner will not budge. On its last night Bistro fou shows a profit of 840 yen. Three hundred days later Tamako summons everyone to a derelict beach house, where she means to open again. Monji, now cooking at a hotel along the shore, says he expects to win. So does she.
Starring
Yoko Makias Tamako Tanaka
A headstrong restaurant planner who quits after her friend is abused at work and opens a rooftop bistro opposite her old company.
Tamako Tanaka’s story
Tamako is helping open her company's flagship when her closest friend, Satsuki, is ordered by the president to strip and apologise in front of the senior staff. She drenches the men responsible in iced water and loses her job. With Satsuki's late father's recipes she opens Bistro fou on the rooftop across the street and fills its kitchen with people the working world has turned away. The flagship's chef is Monji, her former boyfriend, who turns up telling her to quit and marry him. When Hoshino abandons Yumi, Tamako brings her back, and when Satsuki returns, they sue the president. The bistro finds its customers, then closes over a dropped spoon and a complaint, with 840 yen in profit. Three hundred days later she gathers everyone at a derelict beach house to open again.
Fumi Nikaidoas Yumi Nitta
A proud, quick-witted Tokyo University graduate, out of work, who becomes the bistro's self-appointed general producer.
Yumi Nitta’s story
Yumi always dresses in black and, for all her degree, cannot find a job. At the bistro she works out costs in her head and points out every flaw in Tamako's plans. She falls for Hoshino, a young man planning a start-up, who takes her to meet a would-be lender in a tower flat full of women dressed to entertain clients; Hoshino takes the man's money and leaves her there. Tamako finds her and brings her back to the bistro, and by the time Hoshino apologises, her feelings have cooled. On the last night it is Yumi who adds up the takings, 840 yen in profit, and she who cries, asking why they must close just as the place is working. Three hundred days later she is at the beach house with the others.
Mayu Matsuokaas Chika Amaki
A brilliant, fearful young cook who hides in a hooded top, the president's daughter, raised on cooking for her withdrawn mother.
Chika Amaki’s story
Chika talks to strangers only through her phone, and before she met Tamako she wanted her father, the president, dead. After her parents divorced, her mother shut herself away for seven years while Chika cooked so that she would eat, then left her. In the bistro's kitchen she cooks what Tamako can only imagine. Her mother finds her again through an online game, comes to the bistro with food she made for her, and asks her to come to Hokkaido with her new partner; Chika stays. She grins when Monji, the chef she admires, finishes her pot-au-feu. On the last day he takes her into his closed restaurant and gives her his frying pan, and there they find her father with his young son, left behind by his second wife. Three hundred days later she is at the beach house.
Mitsuki Takahataas Airi Kawana
A company employee who smiled through harassment until a colleague stalked and attacked her, then joins the bistro.
Masahiro Higashideas Makoto Monji
The chef of the company's flagship across the street and Tamako's former boyfriend, devoted to cooking and blind to everything else.
Tetta Sugimotoas Taro Amaki
The charismatic president of Like Dining Service, who bullies the men who work for him and harasses the women.
Why it matters
A Restaurant with Many Problems is about sexual harassment and abuse at work, and about the people who are told to laugh them off. Yuji Sakamoto's script shows what is done to Satsuki plainly and follows its long wake: the colleagues who watched, the manager who calls every complaint an overreaction, the lawsuit that reaches the public only as magazine gossip. It is just as exact about the quieter harms, a woman who survives by smiling, a girl who raised herself in her mother's kitchen, a pastry chef whose manner has cost one job after another. The bistro is their answer, and the series will not pretend that answer is secure: it closes over a dropped spoon, 840 yen in profit. What it offers is what the company never did, a table where each of them is taken seriously. The question it leaves is how many workplaces run on women agreeing not to make a fuss.