Chapter 61
After saying I would create a mass-market restaurant brand, I spent the next few days carving out time to develop its menu.
An expensive course can take its time convincing the customer.
You open with a story on the first plate, establish the direction with the second, give it force with the main course, and leave a memory with dessert.
Customers set aside their time and money, and come prepared to wait accordingly.
But a mass-market restaurant is different.
The window between a customer sitting down, ordering, eating, and making a judgment is extremely short.
If it tastes good, they come back. If it is mediocre or tasteless, they never come again.
There is no time to insert a long-winded explanation in between.
They came simply to fill their stomachs, and if I launched into a lengthy lecture in front of their food, they would want to pound my head with a spoon.
The flavors at a mass-market restaurant need to hit quickly and clearly.
The problem was that producing a clear flavor consistently was difficult.
“The broth is a little different from yesterday.”
Marie said.
I stopped in front of the pot.
“In what way?”
“Yesterday, it tasted just right the moment I ate it, but today it comes through a little late. It tastes good, but there’s something about the first spoonful.”
Marie had started saying things like that now.
At first, she had only been able to judge food with comments like “It’s delicious” and “Want some more?” but now she could make a rough assessment of the flavor.
That was how people grew.
I tasted the broth again.
She was right.
I had simmered the meat and potatoes for a long time and adjusted the spices.
But the strength of the finish was slightly lacking.
At Maison Monbel, I could make up for that with another dish, but the broth at a mass-market restaurant had to stand on its own in a single bowl.
I set down my spoon.
“It’s lacking umami.”
Marie tilted her head.
“Umami?”
“The flavor that lingers at the back of your tongue when you eat it. The flavor that comes from meat broth, dried mushrooms, seafood, and vegetables cooked for a long time.”
“Oh, the flavor that makes you want to keep eating?”
“Yeah. That.”
I recalled my memories from my previous life.
I needed MSG.
That white powder people were needlessly afraid of, needlessly vilified, and secretly fond of anyway.
Used properly, it supported the foundation of a dish.
Used too much, it made food taste cheap, but used in moderation, it gave the broth a backbone.
You couldn’t openly use it in fine dining, but the basic methods for drawing out umami were not all that different.
You could draw it out using kelp, dried fish, mushrooms, long-simmered stock, fermented pastes, and the like.
The names and forms were different, but the compounds were essentially similar.
The question was whether I could produce it consistently in this world.
‘For starters, I know it comes from kelp.’
I got in touch with people on the coast and bought large quantities of kelp and dried seaweed through House Rosenhart’s transportation network.
Apparently, the ingredient merchant had been puzzled at first.
Why was a noble restaurant buying so much seaweed instead of fish?
The answer was simple.
Because it looked like it could make money.
A few days later, sacks of seaweed were piled up in the backyard of the estate.
Marie grimaced when she saw them.
“Ugh, it smells fishy.”
“It’s seaweed.”
“Are we going to eat all of this?”
“Some of it is for eating, some for steeping, and some for drying.”
“So you’re doing something weird again.”
“It isn’t weird. It’s research.”
“You’ve been saying that a lot lately.”
She was right.
Lately, I was becoming more like the director of a research institute than a chef.
I washed the seaweed, dried it, soaked it in water, and boiled it.
At first, it produced a fairly pleasant, clean umami flavor.
But the problem was the concentration.
Soaking it in water brought out the flavor, but it was too weak.
Boiling it for too long brought out bitterness and a fishy smell.
At a certain point, reducing it made it sticky and cloudy.
What I wanted was a powder.
But I didn’t know exactly how to extract it.
In my previous life, I could simply use premade MSG or make kelp stock.
I had a rough idea about glutamic acid and sodium and so on, but I didn’t know how to extract it from raw materials and manufacture it industrially.
I was a chef, not a chemist.
And in this world, there were alchemists instead of chemists.
“Let’s contact the Magic Tower.”
When I said that, Elysia raised her eyebrows slightly.
“Again?”
“This time, we need someone who knows about extraction rather than magical cooking. Someone who can extract the flavor components from seaweed and turn them into a form that can be dried and stored.”
“An alchemist?”
“Yes.”
Elysia thought for a moment.
“Will the Magic Tower just send someone?”
“We’ll have to set a condition.”
“What kind?”
I sighed.
“I’ll make a business trip to the Magic Tower later.”
“You have to make a business trip to the Imperial Palace, travel around consulting for restaurants, and manage Maison Monbel in between all that.”
“That’s why I said later.”
“The Magic Tower won’t like hearing that.”
“Then let’s say I’ll go after we coordinate our schedules.”
“They’ll like that.”
Nobles, mages, and businessmen all ultimately speak differently, so how you package things matters most.
The Magic Tower’s reply came quickly.
Once we offered them monthly reservation passes as well as catered meals for their business trips, they became surprisingly cooperative.
Estelle’s eyes lit up when she read the letter.
“They say the Alchemical Extraction Division will send someone. Extracting flavor components from seaweed? I want to see it too.”
“You already have plenty of work, Ms. Estelle.”
“I can sleep less.”
“No.”
“Just a little.”
“No.”
Marie nodded beside us.
“Mage, you shouldn’t start turning into Kyle.”
“Me?”
“If you leave the two of you alone, you won’t eat, and you’ll make something weird.”
Estelle thought for a moment before replying seriously,
“That is true.”
She was quick to admit it.
Two days later, an alchemist came from the Magic Tower.
She was a woman named Laura Mellen.
She looked slightly older than Estelle, and although her hair was neatly tied back, every pocket of her robe held small bottles and metal tools.
The smell of chemicals clung to her fingertips, and her eyes belonged to someone who wanted to take apart any ingredient the moment she saw it.
Should I call her a chemist?
Why did everyone from the Magic Tower have eyes like that?
Laura spoke the moment she saw the sacks of seaweed.
“What exactly am I supposed to do here?”
“We need to extract a powder. It has to support the flavor of the broth in very small quantities and remain stable during long-term storage. It can’t smell fishy, and it needs to be easy to use.”
“How much impurity is acceptable?”
“As long as it isn’t unpleasant to eat.”
Laura smiled.
“That is the most difficult standard for an alchemist.”
I liked her already.
This was someone I could talk to.
The experiments began immediately.
We compared soaking the seaweed in cold water for a long time with soaking it in warm water for a short time.
We found the point at which boiling brought out bitterness and checked how the aroma changed depending on the drying temperature.
Laura took out a small distillation apparatus and a magic stone for drying, while Estelle helped maintain the temperature with magic.
One side of the kitchen became a full-fledged laboratory.
Marie looked exhausted just watching it.
“I think we’ve really gone beyond the boundaries of a restaurant now.”
“We’re making broth.”
“Is drying seaweed and turning it into powder broth?”
“It becomes broth later.”
“Then what is it now?”
I thought for a moment.
“Future broth.”
“I really hate this.”
The first result was a failure.
It was fucking salty and fishy.
I put a tiny amount into the broth and immediately grimaced.
“This won’t do.”
Laura asked,
“Why not?”
“It tasted like garbage left lying on the floor of a fish market.”
“How bad could it be… Ugh, it really does.”
Marie covered her mouth and laughed.
The second had a strong bitterness.
The third smelled good, but the flavor was weak.
The fourth was fairly good.
When I added a very small amount to clear broth, it was unnoticeable at first, then rose up from behind to support the flavor.
It filled in the empty spaces in the meat broth and drew out the sweetness of the root vegetables a little longer.
I set down my spoon.
“This is the direction we want.”
Laura’s eyes brightened.
“We’ll reduce the extraction time and remove some of the salt before drying it. Then, if we mix in a very small amount of dried mushroom powder, the finish should improve.”
“That sounds good. But the mushroom can’t be too strong.”
“Let’s find the right ratio.”
The core of the mass-market restaurant brand was beginning to take shape.
Simmering bones for a long time was fine, but we needed additional support if every branch was going to produce the same flavor.
Broth base, seaweed powder, dried mushrooms, fried onions, and meat fat.
We could standardize all of those.
At Maison Monbel, I adjusted things by instinct; at the mass-market restaurant, we would match them according to rules.
Both were cooking, but the methods were different.
Elysia looked over the experimental results and immediately asked,
“Can you produce this in large quantities?”
Laura answered,
“It’s possible. However, the quality of the seaweed will need to be consistent, and we’ll need a drying room. The reduction process will produce a strong smell.”
Marie spoke up immediately.
“Then don’t do it at the estate.”
“I agree.”
I nodded at once.
If Maison Monbel started smelling like the floor of a harbor, it was over.
“It would be better to set up a workshop near the coast.”
Elysia’s eyes sparkled.
“Then we’ll have to sign a contract with Count Rosenhart too.”
“Yes. We can handle the seaweed supply, initial washing, and drying locally, then manage only the final blending on our end.”
“The business is growing again.”
“We started this just to sell a bowl of broth.”
“A good bowl of broth makes money.”
The young lady had learned very well.
So well that she was frightening sometimes.
That evening, we served broth made with the new powder as the staff meal.
It was a spicy broth with meat and potatoes.
We added just a little MSG extracted from seaweed.
Marie took one bite and stopped.
Then she took another bite.
“It’s better than yesterday, but I don’t know what makes it better.”
“It’s a success.”
Thomas nodded too.
“The broth has more depth. There’s no particular off smell, either.”
Nina said cautiously,
“The aftertaste lingers for a long time.”
Ria tore off a piece of bread and dipped it straight into the broth.
Laura looked satisfied by their reactions.
“Flavor is more complicated than I expected. Even if you can separate the components, why a person takes one more spoonful is a separate question.”
“That’s business.”
I said.
Laura nodded seriously.
“Fascinating.”
Everyone from the Magic Tower said things were fascinating and then made the work even bigger.
The flavor of the mass-market restaurant brand was taking shape.
It wasn’t the splendor of fine dining, but it was a flavor people would want to eat every day.
Not a flavor you ate once and forgot, but one you would remember again on a tiring day.
A flavor that could fill your stomach with a bowl of hot broth even when money was tight.
And behind it all, Maison Monbel would quietly make money.
It was a beautiful structure.
“This is what knowledge from another world looks like.”