Chapter 20
There was something I'd been feeling for a while.
The kitchen at Monbel Manor was fucking tiny.
Of course, it had been cramped from the beginning, but back then, even calling it cramped had been a luxury.
The family had been on the verge of ruin, ingredients were scarce, staff were nonexistent, and I had been wrestling with a dull knife just to save a single piece of goat meat.
But things were different now.
Maison Monbel had a name, and reservations were beginning to fill up.
And yet the kitchen was still cramped.
This wouldn't do.
“We need to overhaul it.”
When I brought Elysia and Uncle Bernard into the kitchen and said this, Uncle Bernard quietly closed his eyes.
Elysia no longer even looked surprised.
“What part?”
“The walls around the kitchen. Open this part up to here... install a work counter here, and something like that?”
“Again?”
“Yes.”
“How much?”
“At the very least, we need to open up the wall toward the storeroom. Add another place to cook with fire, and set aside a separate prep table. Right now, we're preparing dessert beside fish being cleaned, and Marie is washing dishes behind the sauce pot. The smells overlap and lower the quality, and if someone slips, a 500-gold plate will be having a funeral on the floor. Most likely, the culprit will be Marie.”
Marie looked up from washing dishes.
“Don't use me as an example.”
“You nearly slip more often than anyone.”
“I don't do that anymore!”
“You've grown.”
Marie started to object, then shut her mouth.
Uncle Bernard said cautiously,
“Construction costs money.”
“Even if it costs money, we have to do it.”
“We'll need manpower, too.”
“Let's hire more villagers.”
Elysia's eyes flickered slightly.
“Villagers?”
“Yes. I hear lodging is being built, too. Work has already started appearing in the village anyway. We need to hire more people for odd jobs as well. People to carry firewood, draw water, wash vegetables, wash dishes, mop floors, take out trash, and receive ingredients. We need extra hands, even if they're not kitchen assistants.”
Thomas nodded beside us.
“Honestly, right now I go get water while prepping, come back and check the pot, then wash dishes while watching the pot.”
“See? Even the new guy already knows how things really are.”
Elysia nodded, and construction finally began.
We opened up part of the storeroom wall at the back of the manor, removed the old shelves, and separated the prep and washing areas.
Firewood was stacked separately, and fish and meat were no longer allowed on the same cutting board.
Two young men and one middle-aged woman from the village joined as general staff.
At first they were nervous about working in an aristocratic manor's kitchen, but their nerves disappeared in a day.
The reason was simple.
I never gave them a chance to feel the dignity of an aristocratic manor kitchen.
“You didn't get all the dirt off those potatoes. Wash and peel them again. Do that shit one more time and I'll make you eat the dirt.”
“This water is for washing hands, not for putting in soup. Do you want to eat soup made with dirty water?”
“Don't hold plates by the inside edge. You'll leave marks. Guests notice stains on a plate before they notice their own faces.”
“Don't mix wet firewood with dry. I'll beat anyone who mixes them with that firewood.”
People were afraid at first, but soon adapted.
Once they heard they would be paid on time, they adapted even faster.
As expected, human adaptability is closely connected to a paycheck.
Once the kitchen had grown a little larger, I brought up the next problem.
“From now on, we'll collect request forms from each guest.”
Elysia asked,
“Request forms?”
“Yes. We'll have guests write down what they want in advance and send it to us. Which course they want, what kind of atmosphere they expect, whether there are ingredients they want to avoid, and whether there's anything they want to commemorate. We'll use that to tailor the course.”
Marie immediately frowned.
“Then won't guests just demand all sorts of things?”
“They will.”
“Then it'll be difficult.”
“That's why we charge a lot.”
Elysia rested her chin on her hand and thought.
“Not bad. From the guest's perspective, it'll feel like they're putting their own story on the table.”
“Exactly.”
“But nobles really love talking about themselves.”
“That's why it makes money.”
I immediately had Uncle Bernard prepare a notice.
From now on, Maison Monbel would accept meal request forms from guests seeking customized courses.
Guests were to write and send in their desired mood, special occasions, flavors they wished to avoid, preferred ingredients, and the story they wanted included in their meal.
The longer and more specific the request, the more intricately the course could be composed.
However, the final composition would be determined by the chef and House Monbel.
The final sentence was important.
We absolutely mustn't promise to do everything a guest wanted.
Otherwise, someone would inevitably demand ridiculous shit like a whole roasted dragon's head or a whale's heart sprinkled with gold dust.
Guest requests were meant to be reference material, not orders that ruled the kitchen.
Even so, the nobles complained right away.
Their first reaction was exactly what I'd expected.
“I have to write something just to eat one meal?”
A baron's steward said that.
An attendant from a count's household had a similar reaction.
“Does my master really need to go to such trouble? Can't you just prepare the most expensive course?”
I didn't laugh.
“Then he can have the Duke's Course.”
“But my master wants a special meal.”
“Then he needs to send us special details.”
“Isn't that something the chef should figure out himself?”
“I'm not a god.”
Of course, chefs sometimes acted as though they were gods inside their kitchens, but they weren't actually gods.
If a guest didn't say what they wanted, the chef had to guess.
If the guess was right, they became a god, but if it was wrong, they became a fucking idiot.
I'd gone through situations like that endlessly in my previous life.
“It's a special occasion.”
So when I asked what kind of occasion it was, they would simply say it was a special day.
Then I'd curse inwardly while setting out flowers, sticking in candles, and writing something in chocolate on the dessert.
But I had no intention of doing that in this life.
If I'm going to charge a high price, the guest has to do some work, too.
There were a lot of complaints during the first few days.
The nobles found it bothersome to organize and write down their feelings and preferences before a meal.
Some asked whether a steward could write in the master's place because the master found it difficult to write personally, while others sent only a single line saying, “A noble and unforgettable banquet.”
I looked at that one-line request and said,
“Run this as the basic Count's Course.”
Elysia laughed.
“That's cruel.”
“Serving a thoughtful course to a thoughtless guest is a loss.”
Count Lagren was the one who changed the trend.
Count Lagren was a quiet man.
He wasn't loud at social gatherings, nor was he particularly famous for women or hunting.
There was only a rumor that he had lost his wife long ago and rarely held large banquets afterward.
The request he sent was truly long.
At first, Uncle Bernard brought in the scroll and said he thought the count had sent the wrong thing.
I unrolled it and fell silent for a moment.
It was closer to a memoir than a meal request.
The spring day when he first met his wife in his youth, the white flowers she loved, the tart berries they had eaten together, the warm milk she had barely been able to drink during the winter when her illness worsened, and the last words she had spoken.
The writing was matter-of-fact, but strangely, it had the power to quiet whoever read it.
Marie wiped at the corner of her eye after looking over from beside me.
“Why is a meal request so sad?”
“I know.”
I looked at the scroll again.
I couldn't say it smelled like money.
It was something that required a little more care than that.
Putting someone's memories on a table could become vulgar if done poorly. But if done well, the guest would never forget it for the rest of their life.
I designed a customized meal for Count Lagren that went beyond the Marquis's Course.
The first bite was paper-thin slices of white fruit and a herb with a floral fragrance.
The appetizer was tart little berries and soft cheese.
The soup combined warm goat's milk with roasted root vegetables, made smooth enough for even a sick person to swallow.
The main was mildly cooked white-fleshed fish. Dessert was milk ice with just a touch of honey and white flower petals.
I didn't go for anything flashy.
A man who had lost his wife didn't need a grand story of downfall or resurrection.
What he needed was for a long-ago spring and the final winter to meet briefly at a single table.
Count Lagren said almost nothing throughout the meal.
Only after eating the final dessert did he press a napkin to his lips and say,
“Strange.”
Not knowing whether he meant it positively or negatively, I held my breath for a moment.
The count looked down at the empty plate.
“If she had eaten this meal, I think she might have smiled, just a little.”
That one sentence was enough.
The bill was settled quietly.
Count Lagren left more money than the Marquis's Course cost.
But more important than that was what he said at a social gathering.
“Maison Monbel reads the request forms.”
The rumor spread in a strange way.
At first, everyone had found writing request forms bothersome.
But once word spread that Count Lagren had been served a meal containing his wife's memories, the mood changed completely.
The nobles suddenly began to believe that their own lives were worth putting on the table, too.
And nobles loved their own lives far too much.
A few days later, the letters began pouring in.
At first, it was one scroll.
Then three.
Then bundles of letters tied together in envelopes.
And at some point, they were practically books.
Marie came in carrying a thick stack of documents in both arms.
“Kyle, they say this is a request form from the marchioness.”
I looked at the thickness of the document.
“That's a request form?”
“Yeah.”
“Isn't that an autobiography?”
“Seems like it. The first page says, ‘The Correlation Between My Childhood and the Dining Table.’”
I closed my eyes for a moment.
“For fuck's sake.”
“We're fucked.”
Elysia was reading another letter beside me.
“This person wants a dessert symbolizing their first love.”
“Oh, that's not bad.”
“They have three first loves.”
“That's very bad.”
Thomas said, holding another scroll,
“This one wants us to express the valor of his house and the blood of his ancestors through a wild boar caught on a hunt.”
“Leave out the blood and keep only the valor.”
“He emphasized the blood three times already.”
“Then raise it to the Duke's Course price.”
“Yes.”
Uncle Bernard quietly looked at the pile of letters, then said,
“Kyle, are you going to read all of this?”
I looked at the mountain of documents.
People who just wanted to eat a single meal were sending full-length novels.
“We need to tell them to send a summary along with it, at least.”
Marie asked,
“What's a summary?”
“A short piece of writing invented by people who don't want to read long pieces to survive.”
Elysia laughed.
“Let's make that a rule, too. The request can be as long as they like, but they have to summarize their desired emotion in three lines on the first page.”
“Sounds good.”
The young lady had unexpectedly grasped the essence of online communities.
No matter how long, pompous, or informative a piece of writing is, it's important to attach a three-line summary at the beginning or end.
-The meal request must include a summary.
After thinking briefly, I added one more line below it.
- Choose no more than one first love.
Marie looked at the sentence and said quietly,
“So this is the kind of world where that has to be written down, too.”
“Fuck, exactly.”
Fine dining in another world was more literary than I'd expected.
I was suddenly exhausted all over again.