The Makanai: Cooking for the Maiko House – Episode 7 “Illness” Recap & Review  

Illness

Episode 7 of The Makanai: Cooking for the Maiko House is laid back and drama-free. It’s New Year’s break, and unlike the rest of the house, Sumire and Kiyo stay in Kyoto, enjoying each other’s company.

The geikos and maikos come back in time to attend a special ceremony that is held every year to commit to improving their skills over the new year. Kiyo doesn’t go with them to the ceremony and instead watches it on TV.

There is a touching moment when Momoko comes on the screen and says what her New Year’s resolution is: to say nice to meet you to any new thing, something that she adopted from Kiyo.

At home, Kiyo smiles with delight. Soon after this event, Sumire falls ill. Kiyo is used to serving porridge when someone is sick, but in Kyoto, people eat udon when they’re sick, so Kiyo hunts for the perfect ingredients to make udon for Sumire.

While she is cooking it, Ryoko points out that even though Kiyo is everyone’s makanai, she still shows favouritism towards Sumire by going out of her way to make special dishes for her. Kiyo serves the udon to Sumire, who loves it, of course.

The first snow of the year comes, and Sumire looks out the window and reminisces about shovelling snow with Kiyo and Kenta back home. She goes outside to find Kiyo up early and hard at work shovelling the snow. Sumire watches, and then they go inside to make hittsumi soup, the perfect dish for a snow day.

The Episode Review

 This episode is really low-key, with a simple synopsis. It would have benefited from a little more depth thrown in there somewhere. And what happened to Momoko? We only see her for about 30 seconds.

This episode does have some great food scenes though that will undoubtedly leave you feeling hungry. These were the highlights. But let’s hope there will be more of an actual plot in the following episode.