I didn't even know this movie existed a month ago. I went to the library to look for Kurosawa movies when I returned some books for my son. I found a couple, struck up a conversation with a librarian checking out, and she recommended this and immediately reserved it for me with me barely saying a word. Now I'm thankful. The movie finally came in and I decided to watch it last night.

As it turns out, I randomly happened into the best food movie I've ever seen. Defined, with tongue in cheek, as a "noodle Western," Tampopo is the protagonist, a woman running a small ramen shop. One night by chance the male lead Goro enters her restaurant and from there the journey begins to become the best restaurant in Japan.

The movie is mostly different flavors of comedy and a love of food, with unrelated, small, food related sequences randomly interspersed to break up the main timeline, including a grocery store manager trying to catch a food squeezer in the act, a white suited gangster who happens to be a serious lover of food and women as he provides the food filled sex scenes, among others.

This movie is hard to describe. But it's truly great. It has genuine humor, it's genuinely interesting, and the main character and story are endlessly charming.

Roger Ebert gave this movie a perfect rating, and who am I to disagree.

Nobuko Miyamoto is the eponymous lady who runs her small noodle bar always with the same regulars and... well it's all just a bit routine. That is until "Gorô" (Tsutomu Yamazaki) and his young sidekick "Gun" (Ken Watanabe) arrive and decide they are going to help her realise her dream to improve her shop. Her emporium also serves as the lynch pin for a few tangential stories that focus around her customers and their need for food - and not only for nourishment, either! My favourite has to be the old woman who insists of squishing the life out of his produce then not buying anything - much to the chagrin of the poor shopkeeper. There is also quite a fun tale of an housewife on her deathbed who rises, just before the end, to cook her family a delicious dinner; and of a gangster - clad in a white suit, who finds quite an erotic way to use his dinner, too. It is funny and quirky, this film, with some really engaging performances and the two hours it takes just flies by.