Chapter 13
The dish placed on the plate was a perfectly cooked game bird.
The breast of a small game bird was cooked at a low temperature to keep it moist, while hot oil was basted over the skin to crisp it up.
Beneath it, I spread a thin layer of sauce mixed with just a little of the red spice we'd used in the soup.
If the soup had warmed them from within, the main course had to hold on to that heat.
This time, two plates went out.
One went to the marquis, and the other to the marchioness.
They were eating the same course, but they weren't exactly the same guests.
The marquis looked for flavor and refinement, while the marchioness looked for story and aftertaste.
So the plates had to look the same while differing in the subtlest ways.
The marquis's plate had a slightly more pronounced balance between the meat and sauce.
When he chewed, the crispness of the skin and tenderness of the meat had to come first.
On the marchioness's plate, I brought out the herb and fruit aromas a little more.
My intention was for the fragrance to open first in her mouth, followed belatedly by the warmth of the meat.
If you asked why I went to such lengths, it was because the guests had paid a lot of money.
Money makes people particular.
“Marie.”
“Yeah.”
“This time, don't go in first. Stay behind Uncle Bernard. There are two plates, but the explanation needs to be one.”
“Two plates, but one?”
“That's right. There are two guests, but one table. It's important that it feel as though they received them at the same time.”
“How am I supposed to do that?”
“Match your steps.”
Marie looked as though she might cry.
“I really think I'm going to throw up.”
“I told you not to throw up earlier, didn't I?”
“Is that rule still in effect?”
“It remains in effect until business ends.”
“What happens if I throw up?”
“What do you think? You, me, and the young lady will have to find somewhere to jump—the Han River… no, wait, where were we supposed to go? Anyway, we'd have to find somewhere to jump off.”
“…….”
I gave the two plates one final inspection.
No sauce smears. Meat temperature good. Herb placement acceptable. Plate rims clean.
If my hand slipped here, the 300-gold resurrection would die on the floor.
“Go.”
Uncle Bernard led the way, with Marie following behind him.
I watched the parlor through the crack in the door.
The marquis and marchioness still seemed unable to escape the soup's aftertaste.
The marquis was lightly running a finger around the edge of his empty bowl, while the marchioness watched the candlelight by the window with her fan folded shut.
It was a good state to leave them in. It wasn't bad for guests to become talkative, but a good course needed moments of silence here and there.
Uncle Bernard set down the plates.
“This is game bird. I warmed the body with the heat left beneath the ashes, then captured the act of following that heat and taking flight again. If Monbel is still breathing, its breath must have this temperature.”
I quietly marveled from inside the kitchen.
‘Uncle, you're practically a maître d' now.’
At first, he'd treated my words as suspicious nonsense, but now he was saying strange things more naturally than anyone.
Organizations were frightening things.
If people went mad together for just a day or two, even their madness developed a division of labor.
The marquis cut into the game bird.
The knife made a faint crackling sound as it passed through the skin.
That sound mattered.
Sometimes the ear reacted before the aroma of the meat.
The marquis's eyebrow twitched slightly at the sound.
‘Good. Now taste it.’
The moment he put a piece in his mouth, his expression changed.
It was the moment the story we'd slowly built through fruit, the appetizer, and the soup settled into meat with the main course.
No matter how refined people pretended to be, they became honest in the face of a satisfying chew.
Especially when it came to meat.
The marchioness ate a little more slowly.
She smelled it first, put a small piece in her mouth, and closed her eyes.
She kept them closed longer than she had with the soup.
She seemed to be following the flow of the course even more precisely than the marquis.
First the fragrance awakened in the fruit, then the seeds burst, then heat returned in the red soup, and now the game bird took flight carrying that heat within it.
It sounded a little pretentious, but fine dining was, by nature, the business of taking pretentious things, charging money for them, and making them elegant.
The marquis dabbed at the corner of his mouth with a napkin and said,
“Strange.”
The marchioness smiled.
“That's the third time you've said that today.”
“I can't help it. I like game bird, but I've never had it like this.”
The marquis looked down at his plate.
“The meat is certainly light. But the heat from the soup is still lingering, so it feels as though it carries through into this as well.”
The marchioness said quietly,
“It feels like a house that has just awakened, not one that has ended.”
Elysia smiled at that.
“If that's how it felt to you, then today's meal was a success.”
I nodded inside the kitchen.
The marchioness had said the very sentence we had intended to sell, in her own words.
This was extremely important.
The moment a guest repeated the story we'd prepared, it stopped being the kitchen's packaging and became the guest's experience.
Just then, Marie stumbled as she backed away.
It was only slight. During an ordinary meal, no one would have paid attention to it.
But today's was a 300-gold table, and I noticed even that tiny misstep.
Marie's eyes widened.
In the kitchen, I moved only my lips.
‘Stop.’
Marie stopped.
Fortunately, the plates had already been set down, and she hadn't touched the water glasses.
She froze for a moment, then took a step back as though nothing had happened.
“…….”
I was going to chew her out like hell later.
For now, it was time to praise her.
The marquis didn't seem to notice.
The marchioness might have seen it, but she pretended not to.
Noble dignity sometimes came from things like this.
They had seen someone else's mistake, but knew that pointing it out would cheapen the atmosphere at their own table.
In that respect, she was a good guest.
After the main course had passed, I prepared dessert.
This dessert consisted of lightly stewed fruit, honey, goat's-milk cheese, and a very thinly toasted piece of bread.
I brought back the fruit from the first plate, but this time I would close with sweetness rather than fragrance.
When the beginning and the end share the same ingredient, guests unconsciously feel the meal as a single circle.
The principle of beginning and ending with the same elements worked in literature, and it worked reasonably well in a meal, too.
Investors in my previous life called this the completeness of a concept.
In the kitchen, it was also called reusing the same ingredients.
Of course, once you took their money, pretentious wording followed.
“Marie, you explain the dessert.”
Marie whispered,
“I almost made a mistake just now.”
“I know.”
“Are you going to scold me?”
“After we're done.”
“What about now?”
“You did well this time. Not falling was the important part.”
Marie's face looked as though something had welled up inside her.
“Is that praise?”
“In a kitchen, that's enormous praise.”
“This really is a strange place.”
“Yeah.”
I handed over the dessert plates.
“This is the last one. If your hands shake here, you'll really get scolded.”
“Don't threaten me three seconds after praising me.”
“It's a balanced education.”
Marie took the dessert out.
“We've brought the fruit from the beginning back together with honey and cheese. The awakened fragrance lingers as a brief sweetness, and today's meal closes here.”
The marchioness gave a small smile when she saw the dessert.
“We've come back to the beginning.”
Elysia nodded.
“Yes. But it isn't the same as the beginning.”
“Is that what resurrection means?”
“If you managed to survive without dying, you couldn't possibly look the same as you did yesterday.”
The marchioness gazed at Elysia for a long while after hearing that.
I watched that gaze from behind the crack in the door.
She wasn't simply looking at a pitiful fallen noble young lady.
The marchioness was looking at Elysia as a story.
A house that had nearly collapsed, a final supper, a strange chef, and a young lady who had begun selling resurrection at the brink of death.
It was exactly the sort of material socialites couldn't help loving.
‘This will sell.’
The marquis and marchioness ate the dessert.
The marquis nodded immediately, while the marchioness swallowed the last piece very slowly.
She set down her napkin and took a sip of the herb water in her glass.
Then she said,
“Miss Monbel.”
“Yes, Marchioness.”
“Today's meal was terribly rude.”
The air in the parlor stiffened slightly.
Marie's face went white, and even Uncle Bernard's eyebrows moved.
I gripped the towel in my hand tightly in the kitchen.
The marchioness smiled gently.
“First you teased your guests with such tiny portions, then you prodded our pride with a few fish eggs, after that you shook us from the inside with an unfamiliar spicy flavor, and finally you left me wondering whether I had come to pity this house or envy it.”
She raised her fan slightly toward Elysia.
“But it was a good kind of rudeness.”
The marquis burst out laughing.
“If that's the marchioness's idea of praise, then it was a resounding success.”
Only then did I exhale.
Ah, my heart nearly fell out of my chest.
If anything was more frightening in the restaurant business than a guest's silence, it was praise that didn't begin like praise.
Especially when noblewomen spoke like that, a chef instantly started preparing Yukgaejang for his own funeral.
Elysia calmly bowed her head.
“You flatter us.”
“I'm not flattering you. And this story will probably spread quite far.”
After saying that, the marchioness politely called for me.
“The chef who prepared this dish was Kyle Prat, wasn't it? May I meet him for a moment?”
I went out to the parlor and bowed.
“Yes, Marchioness.”
“When will the next meal be available?”
Judging by the fact that she was making the next reservation right away, today had gone beyond a great success into something else entirely.
Before answering, I looked at Elysia.
She thought for just a moment, then gave me the slightest nod.
The meals at this house were no longer something I alone was selling.
They now bore Elysia's name, and Monbel's story.
“It depends on our reservations. We accept only one table per meal.”
The marchioness's eyes curved slightly.
“So you're selling scarcity.”
“To preserve our refinement.”
“You have quite a way with words.”
“I'm still not as good at it as I am at cooking.”
The marquis laughed loudly, and the marchioness lightly tapped the table with one finger.
“Good. Next time, I'll give you the names of the people I plan to invite to my social gathering. Can you prepare a meal suited to them?”
Calculations began spinning through my head.
A personalized course required storytelling tailored to each customer.
The smell of money was becoming overwhelmingly strong.
“We can. However, the price may vary.”
The marchioness smiled as though delighted.
“Of course it should. It would be no fun to sell different stories for the same price.”
I realized it in that moment.
She was a good guest.
More precisely, she was dangerously good.
She had money, taste, a voice in high society, and took pleasure in paying dearly for expensive things.
If you secured a customer like this, a restaurant came back to life.
But if you handled them wrong, the chef died first.
Marquis Reinfeld rose from his seat and said,
“I've already paid for today's meal, but since my beloved wife was satisfied, I'll leave an additional gratuity.”
At his signal, one of his attendants placed another small pouch on the table.
I looked away when I saw it.
You shouldn't stare at a money pouch in front of guests for too long.
It makes you look broke. Of course, we really were fucking poor, but we couldn't look broke.
We had neither money nor dignity, but we could pretend to have dignity.
After the marquis and marchioness left, the parlor door closed.
“We survived…”
Marie collapsed into a chair, and I put down the towel.
“Get up.”
“Why?”
“We have to do the dishes.”
“That's so cruel!”
“And about that misstep you made earlier.”
Marie's face went lifeless.
“You saw that?”
“The only thing I can't see is dissatisfaction a guest hides beneath a napkin.”
“Are you going to scold me?”
I looked at her for a moment before saying,
“You didn't fall, so it's fine. Next time, don't think about your feet first; think about the weight of the plate. Your body needs to follow the plate. If your foot moves first, it'll wobble.”
Marie stared at me blankly.
“That's it?”
“Yeah.”
“You're really not going to scold me?”
“A service that's over won't come back no matter how much you curse at it. Just don't do it during the next service.”
Marie suddenly made a strange expression.
It was a face that looked like it might cry and smile at the same time.
“Sometimes you really seem like a strangely good person.”
“That's a misunderstanding. I'm still making you do the dishes.”
Marie's expression immediately soured.
Elysia picked up the extra pouch on the table.
“Kyle.”
“Yes.”
“We made money again.”
“Indeed we did.”
“What should we buy next?”
I thought for a moment.
Better butter, better plates, better meat, spices, wine.
There was a lot to buy.
But I knew what we needed first.
“People.”
Elysia blinked.
“People?”
“At this rate, the kitchen will die first. Even if we keep training the servants, we need at least one more person, whether an assistant chef or someone in charge of washing dishes.”
Elysia looked at Marie.
Marie's soul had already halfway left her body.
If we kept making someone like this wash dishes on top of everything else, she'd probably break.
Marie has broken! We've gotten a lot of use out of her, though~ It would be a problem if she ended up like this.
“That's true.”
“And, my lady.”
“Yeah.”
“We also need to prepare to charge more for reservations.”
Elysia's eyes gleamed.
“How much?”
Looking at the pouch the marchioness had left behind, I said,
“Let's start by quoting 500 gold for the next one. If it's the duke, we can squeeze that much out of him.”