Although one may notice a certain Western influence in Yoshimoto's style, Kitchen is still critically recognized as an example of contemporary Japanese literature; The Independent, The Times, and The New Yorker have all reviewed the novel favorably.

There have been two films made of the story, a Japanese movie in 1989 and a more widely released version produced in Hong Kong by Yim Ho in 1997.

She gradually grows close to one of her grandmother's friends, Yuichi, from a flower shop and ends up staying with him and his transgender mother, Eriko.

In Moonlight Shadow, a woman named Satsuki loses her boyfriend Hitoshi in an accident and tells us: "The night he died my soul went away to some other place and I couldn't bring it back".

"[2] Regarding the inclusion of Moonlight Shadow with Kitchen, however, Kakutani criticized the editorial decision: "Its noisy echoes of that other novella—the same themes, emotions and even motifs all appear here—feel repetitious and cloying, and they distract the reader from this generously gifted young writer's achievement."