Rare Flavours

[cornerofmadness]

Rare Flavours by Ram V.

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


CW - cannibalism (sort of, as Rubin points out he's not exactly human)


Rubin Baksh is motivated by the death of Anthony Bourdain to set his own culinary journey down on film and to that end, he hand picks a filmmaker who is down on his luck, Mo. He has hunted down some old movie of Mo's that infuriates the young man but in the end makes him agree to work with Rubin and they set off across India in search of the titular rare flavors.

What Mo doesn't know is that Rubin is a demonic Rakshasa from folklore, a monster of such appetites he cannot be sated. He was stopped once upon a time by a mythic hero who snapped his spine and left him to die in a cave. He did not but he's been lying low until now.

Mo does learn of Rubin's habit of eating people (and doesn't run) and that there are two demon hunters on their trail. The contrast of Rubin's love of food history, of preserving food culture that is disappearing, is a stark one when you consider he's eating some of the people along the way. For much of the graphic novel you also don't know who this Masi is he's talking to in the narration but we learn of her later.

It's also told nonlinearly as we have segments of Mo nervously debuting his documentary. I very much enjoyed the story. I was less of a fan of the art style, especially how oddly with little regard to human form that Rubin was drawn in. I loved the attention to details and the recipes as we went. It's worth reading even with its dark theme.



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