Precious Ingredients

There were many reasons, but that was the most prominent. The prominent reason was the fact that real ingredients had become too rare and expensive, and that corporations' convenience meal packs had completely taken over the market, rendering individual cooking skills meaningless.

Traditional ingredients weren't just expensive; they had become an entirely inaccessible domain for ordinary people. , a matter of accessibility beyond just price.

It was like ordinary customers not even knowing about the existence of custom high-end luxury services or products that only VVIP customers could purchase.

Because they were too expensive for people to afford, they gradually disappeared from daily life. With no demand, the supply dried up, and even large stores and net marts stopped selling these former ingredients.

And just like that, they were forgotten. Alternative Ingredients had completely replaced them, quite literally.

Now, most people considered seaweed bread and soy meat to be real meat and real bread. They ate tomato-flavored synthetic ketchup without knowing what a tomato was, and drank apple-flavored processed juice without knowing what an apple was.

An extreme Food Desert.

Ordinary people lost the very right to access traditional foods.

Even with money, they couldn't buy cultured ingredients unless they had a high-rise residency right and a premium market ID. They didn't know where to buy them, and even if they found out, they'd be frustrated by the lack of a membership.

Thus, fresh food had become entirely the exclusive preserve of the wealthy. It was, in itself, a limited service that only VVIP customers could enjoy.

Therefore, only the wealthy, who could freely acquire the necessary ingredients, or the master chefs who offered top-tier services to those wealthy individuals, could master the advanced skill of cooking.

Ingredients alone boasted prices nearly 100 times higher than in the previous world, to say nothing of the luxury foods crafted from those expensive ingredients by a master's hand.

Each dish was so expensive it could cost more than its weight in gold.

Just as fresh food had become the domain of luxury goods, chefs had also attained a status similar to luxury designers. What one ate was, in itself, a criterion for one's social standing, and food was a subject that stimulated the vanity of the wealthy more than houses, clothes, jewelry, or cars.

Naturally, the artisans who created such food also became rare and expensive.

Chefs, possessing their unique skills and recipes passed down only to their direct disciples, became famous and wealthy. Among the countless aspirants striving to become such chefs, after a long apprenticeship period, only a very small number managed to seize the opportunity to handle proper ingredients, succeeding or failing.

Obtaining the title of chef was that difficult, and stating confidently that one knew how to cook was also no easy feat.

It wasn't for nothing that Mr. Dragon had asked with a lukewarm attitude if there was a way to prove it.

So, was there a way to prove it...?

There was something.

As I said, I was someone who had mastered the advanced skill of cooking.

Of course, I wasn't skilled enough to whip up restaurant-quality dishes, and I was merely a competent home cook who had taught myself using various YouTube cooking videos and internet recipes. Yet, even that was considered a considerable skill by the standards here.

Not quite Chef-level, but certainly capable of being a cook.

The net was so polluted that most recipes were lost or locked, and even aspiring chefs found it difficult to properly handle ingredients.

It was a place where the majority didn't even know what onions, green onions, garlic, tomatoes, or potatoes were.

Amidst all this, I, who had handled various ingredients and tools and remembered many recipes, was bound to be a significant talent. To exaggerate slightly, if I gained just a little kitchen experience, I could be deployed as an immediate asset.

I told the Chairman as much when I asked for a job: that I was someone with these skills, and that I would be useful.

And indeed, I was deployed.

As a Head Chef and an Executive Chef.

Someone once said that a restaurant kitchen was like a nation unto itself, didn't they?

The Head Chef was the king of that nation. Or perhaps its president. And I suddenly parachuted into such a position.

I said I could work as a cook, and they made me a chef outright. Typical of the Chairman's boldness and grand vision, I suppose.

And that record remained exactly as it was.

[What? It's <F1>honto</F1> (real)?]

That was Manager Dragon's reaction after reading the career history written based on the data I presented.

Aaron Nakamura, Executive Chef at Enkai, the special-grade Japanese restaurant on the 101st floor of Kyoku Hotel.

Yes. Surprisingly, it was real. My other records were forged data, but that one thing was the truth.

I really did work as an Executive Chef at a special-grade high-end Japanese restaurant for five months. My previous workplace was a restaurant. Until recently, I was working there in a white chef's uniform.

Of course, it was only true that I worked there; I didn't actually perform the role of an Executive Chef.

How could I, a regular university student, lead all the kitchen staff, from apprentices to cooks and chefs, and also develop new menus and recipes? While I had some confidence in my cooking, managing a kitchen was an entirely different matter. It was an area that required experience and wisdom.

Moreover, the standard of restaurants in this world wasn't lower than in the past. Even if the quality of ordinary food consumed by the general public had plummeted, restaurant food consumed by the wealthy had undergone continuous refinement, becoming even more elaborate and complex than before.

With advanced science and technology, they presented such extraordinary molecular gastronomy... it was literally impossible for someone of my level to oversee all of it.

The role of a kitchen leader isn't something just anyone can do. At least, I wasn't capable of it.

And thankfully, I wasn't given such an overwhelming role.

Just like the Chairman, who knew exactly how much to squeeze his subordinates to achieve optimal results. He might assign tasks that were close to impossible, but never entirely impossible ones.

The role the Chairman assigned me when he gave me the Head Chef title was that of the restaurant's figurehead.

And what he said was,

I've been focusing on the hotel industry lately... and the place I'm most interested in is Kyoku Hotel. The rooms are top-notch, and the facilities like the lobby, lounge, fitness center, business center, etc., are all excellent, but the restaurant is a bit lacking, you see. If only the restaurant were up to par, it would be perfect.

According to the Chairman, the restaurant's food and interior weren't bad, but the chef's name recognition was a bit disappointing. In terms of marketing, they were bound to fall behind rival hotels that had famous chefs.

Even for those trying to find a new chef, most renowned Chefs had either opened their own restaurants or still had a long time left on their contracts.

Furthermore, they were all incredibly proud, making it impossible to hire them with just money, which created a difficult situation.

The company had only recently entered the high-end F&B industry, so a weak talent acquisition pipeline likely also played a part.

So, the solution they came up with was that if they couldn't bring in a famous chef, they would create a famous chef themselves. In short, it was a scam: the fake chef creation project.

I was optimal as the lead actor, being familiar with East Asian food, ingredients, spices, and seasonings, possessing cooking knowledge and experience, and being a rare Pure Asian. A Japanese restaurant run by a chef who *appeared* Japanese — from the customers' perspective, nothing could be more trustworthy.

Thus, the operation was executed under the Chairman's orders, and the restaurant presented an unidentified East Asian, packaged as a genius chef, to target Dusk City's upper class, who were deeply enamored with Orientalism.

I thought I was too young to play the role of a chef, but apparently, East Asians generally look younger than their age, and with anti-aging procedures becoming common among the upper class these days, this age was considered just right.

I never thought it would work, but it really did.

After a few weeks of doing as I was told, I, Aaron Nakamura, had become a young genius chef, a Japanese cuisine expert who had mastered the best cooking skills in Neo Tokyo and come to conquer Dusk City.

And that concept apparently captured the attention of the wealthy, leading to great success, resulting in doubling the restaurant's sales and completely surpassing rival hotels.

The strategy, which exploited the fact that the people of this city had immense fantasies about Neo Tokyo but virtually no information exchange, making them ignorant of details like which chefs were there or the trends in the F&B industry, worked incredibly well.

All I did in that process was diligently learn Japanese, memorize Japanese cuisine terminology and restaurant dish descriptions almost by rote, maintain the concept of a mysterious Executive Chef, a master of Japanese cuisine who rarely appeared before guests, and only show up to strike a pose and explain various dishes when VVIP customers arrived.

Marketing and promotion were handled by the Chairman's management team, and the actual responsibilities of a Head Chef were entirely carried out by the Deputy Executive Chef and the Sous Chef. Thinking about it now, I was nothing more than a mascot, a figurehead, yet I hogged all the restaurant's spotlight. Do I feel a little sorry for the Sous Chef? ...No.

That guy at least got paid for the work he did, didn't he?

I worked without even getting proper pay. Outwardly, I projected the image of a mysterious and magnificent Executive Chef to the customers, but in reality, I was lower class, struggling day to day. As a slave with a tight leash from the company, I received a meager salary and was overworked every day I went to work, all day.

One might say, 'It's not like you were a real Executive Chef, just pretending to be one, so how hard could it be?'

You'd have to do it yourself. Unless you've done it yourself, you can't even imagine how difficult it is.