La Grande Maison Paris

This is one the best Japanese drama series about running high-end restaurants with French and Japanese nouvelle cuisine with local ingredients, and how to win Michelin Star in Japan; not just one star but three. The production is so serious, the presentation of every dish shown in this series is just not just look beautiful but divine. The storyline is not a traditional, predictable, a boring straight line, but a very complicated, yet desirable one. The cast job is almost perfect, if not arranged a clown-like owner of the opponent restaurant. Just by looking at those dishes prepared by many of the characters in this series, you would realize how these actors tried their best to make their roles look so realistic. The competitions between those two restaurants in Tokyo, while trying so hard to gain Michelin Star, earning the praises from their patrons and the food critics are also not an easy job.

Actor Takuya Kimura who played the stubborn-with-conscience Chef Natsuki Obana, the beautiful and elegant Kyôka Suzuki, who played Rinko Hayami, are both so impressive to watch.

But after my praises to this great series, I have one accusation to its production company, Tokyo Broadcasting System about their unforgivable problem that has been existed and never changed or improved for so many years. Their repeated laziness of using exactly the same SOUNDTRACK, the BACKGROUND MUSIC in almost all of their drama series. We would hear and listen to the same music played on and on in so many of their drama series, even they are with different genres or time frames:

La Grande Maison Paris (2024) Japan Sinks: People of Hope (2021) Riku Oh (2017) A Life: Itoshiki Hito (2017) Nankyoku tairiku: Kami no ryouiki ni idonda otoko to inu no monogatari (2011) Karei naru ichizoku (2007) doragon-zakura (2005) Good Luck!! (2003) Beautiful Life (2000)

In these series and almost all of the other TV drama series produced by Tokyo Broadcast System I did not included or pointed out here, are exactly the same soundtracks, the way their music production teams chosen to play on and on, when to insert, or the decision to play them seemingly non-stop are all the same, not just similar, but exactly the same in so many years, they never changed and never got tired to use them again and again. They are not just disturbing, annoying and so disgust. I cannot imagine how lazy their music people could be this bad.

The story was engaging and well worth the wait. The scope has expanded significantly, giving the narrative a grander scale. The food cinematography is absolutely top-tier-every dish looks irresistibly delicious.

However, one weakness I noticed was the shift in character focus. As someone who followed the original series "La Grande Maison Tokyo",

I appreciated how each character had a strong presence, rich dialogue, and ample screen time. But in the film adaptation, the need to introduce new supporting characters meant that main roles like Kyono, Aizawa, and even Rinko were given noticeably less attention-something I found quite regrettable.

That said, the emotional weight of overcoming obstacles and pursuing one's dreams still hit all the right notes. The flavor of inspiration remains intact.