Beef Stew After the Rain

Set in the fictional Harukawa City, Rila Takanashi runs a cookery class for men. Her five students each have different reasons for being there. One wishes to gain autonomy, one wants to win his wife back, one has been sent undercover to investigate Rila.

Rila isn’t your average cooking teacher. She doesn’t teach fancy recipes or exciting new dishes. She doesn’t encourage her students to impress or seduce. Instead her lessons focus on everyday meals. She wants these men to know what it’s like to be a woman.

“Cooking can be boring,” she explains. “It can be boring and hard work.”

In the class there’s Fugo, the 21 year-old college student working nights in a host club; Kaoru, the retired detective whose attitudes towards cooking and gender roles could do with updating; Kohei, the 38-year-old architect whose wife and daughter have recently left him; teenage Haruto who’s grieving his grandmother; and screenwriter Toru who is certain he knows Rila from his past.

The thing is Rila’s students all recognise her—they just can’t figure out from where.

Equal parts dramatic and delicious, Beef Stew After the Rain is told from the perspective of these five students. With each chapter written through the eyes of a different member of the class, we piece together the enigma of Rila Takanashi.