Simply by serving good food, well cooked, and allowing the emotions to roll through the individual, he’s able to expose their fears, their challenges, or their pain. As the main character, he shows up for surprisingly little screen time, but that just makes his role all the more potent. The Master occupies something of an omniscient role within the story. Eating this food kicks off some self-reflection for the person, often with some nostalgia for the past, and from there they ultimately come to a great realisation of where something has gone wrong in their lives, and the steps they should take to right themselves.

With each episode, a patron requests something nostalgic to them – it might be sauteed mushrooms, or kaarage (deep-fried chicken).

This rule quickly establishes the structure of the show. The catch is that his diner is only open from the hours of midnight to 7am, and while his diner’s menu only features around four or five items (as is typical for these back-alley watering holes), The Master can cook up anything requested of him by his patrons… so long as he has the ingredients available. Midnight Diner is a genuine, bona fide masterpiece of television, and the kind of show that anyone who wants to get a sense of the Japanese mind and spirit should watch.īased on a manga of the same name, Midnight Diner stars “The Master” (played by Kobayashi Kaoru), a man who runs a small bar tucked away in the back streets of Shinjuku. I missed that release, whenever it was (perhaps I was in Japan at the time), but after noticing that it was there a couple of nights ago, I’ve since binged the entire thing.

A second season to one of the best hidden gems on Netflix landed fairly recently.

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