I deliberately picked Come Back Anytime as my first Hot Docs experience this year because in a time of chaos, what I needed most was something warm, inviting and a reminder of good in the world. These are words which describe this documentary well, but which can also be used to describe the primary focus of the documentary – ramen. See what I did there?
Come Back Anytime is a documentary about Masamoto Ueda, a self taught Ramen Master who owns a ramen shop in Tokyo. Now you might be thinking – well, there’s probably 5000 of those in Tokyo. While that is true, this little restaurant goes beyond your normal food porn doc. The documentary explores food as a place of community, a place where individual, sometimes lost souls can find a place of being – certainly a challenge in a place as sprawling, daunting and busy as Tokyo. It looks into how a restaurant of any sort can move beyond a mere transaction and the how it can eventually change the people’s lives around it.
Also – there’s a lot of delicious looking shots of ramen. Makes you hungry and also feel all warm inside.