Chapter 81
Albert Lanang came on his day off.
That alone put me off.
A day off was meant for resting.
Of course, I had no right to say that.
I came down to the kitchen to practice even on my days off, after all.
But ruining my own day off and having someone else ruin it were two different things.
Uncle Bernard opened the door and stepped inside very carefully.
“Kyle, we have a guest.”
“A guest from the restaurant? It's our day off.”
“No. He's Albert Lanang, the former imperial head chef.”
I set down my knife.
“Already?”
“Chef Olgren contacted him, and he says he came in person to check things out today.”
Albert Lanang was a small, thin old man.
But his eyes weren't old at all.
His white beard was trimmed short, and though he carried a cane, he didn't seem to rely on it.
He was simply holding it in his hand; it looked more like a tool for beating chefs he disliked.
The moment he entered the kitchen, he surveyed his surroundings.
Then, without even looking at my face, he said,
“Are you the chef behind that unconventional cooking?”
It was not a good start.
Marie opened and closed her mouth, while Thomas froze.
Even Uncle Bernard's eyebrows moved ever so slightly.
I bowed my head for the moment.
“I'm Kyle Prat. Thank you for coming in person.”
“No need to thank me. From what I've heard, you put magic into the middle of your courses, imitate Eastern cuisine, and sell dishes with all sorts of silly stories tacked onto them.”
“That's mostly true.”
“Shameless.”
“It isn't wrong.”
Only then did Albert look at me.
His eyes were sharp.
“Young chefs these days think putting decorations on a plate makes something into a dish, all while going on about stories and experiences. Guests come to eat food, not chew on a chef's nonsense.”
I didn't argue with him.
Because he was right.
“I agree.”
Albert's eyes narrowed slightly.
“You agree?”
“Yes. Stories only have meaning when the food tastes good. A tasteless story is trash on a plate.”
Marie stifled a small laugh behind me.
Albert looked at me for a moment.
“Then show me.”
“Show you what?”
“I'll see whether you have any fundamentals. No strange fire tricks—do it properly.”
I thought for a moment.
This old man hadn't come to see anything flashy.
Rather, he had come to see whether I hid behind the flashiness.
Then the answer was simple.
I just had to avoid hiding.
I took out some beef trimmings from the slaughterhouse the day before and some bone stock from the refrigerator.
There weren't many ingredients prepared because it was my day off, but that was better.
Fundamentals show more clearly when there are fewer ingredients than when there are many.
“I'll make a dish with meat and vegetables served in a clear broth. I won't add any special decorations.”
“Good. Don't give it some plausible-sounding name, either.”
“It's just meat and clear sauce.”
“That will do.”
I prepared the meat.
Albert watched in silence.
His gaze was on my fingertips, not my face.
The angle at which the knife entered, the speed at which it followed the sinew, and how much fat I left behind.
His words were rough, but his eye was precise.
I turned the heat down low and warmed the bone stock in a small pot.
I added only a little vegetable trimmings and herbs.
Not to add aroma, but merely enough to support the meat's aroma.
I intended to make a clear liquid, closer to broth than sauce.
I seared only the outside of the meat in the pan first.
I used medium heat, not high heat.
I listened to the sizzle and waited for the moment the surface dried.
I didn't flip it impatiently. I waited until the meat naturally released from the pan, then cooked the other side the same way.
Albert spoke for the first time.
“You know how to wait.”
“If the meat is still stuck and I force it off, I've lost.”
“That's right.”
It was hard to tell whether that was a compliment.
I let the meat rest briefly, then deglazed the fond left in the pan with the stock.
I was careful not to cloud the broth, and I didn't use butter.
Today, it was better to let the ingredients speak for themselves than to indulge my own ambition.
I blanched the vegetables separately.
I cut them to matching sizes and cooked them briefly in water seasoned with exactly the right amount of salt.
If I made them too soft, they would fall apart.
They needed enough chew to balance the meat.
I served the dish simply.
Thinly sliced meat, blanched vegetables, and clear sauce.
At the end, I added only a little more salt.
Albert silently took a bite.
The entire kitchen fell quiet.
He chewed the meat, ate the vegetables, and tasted the sauce separately.
Then he wiped the corners of his mouth with a napkin.
“I was wrong.”
I blinked.
That was a quicker admission than I'd expected.
Albert looked down at the plate again.
“The fundamentals are there. You didn't rush the cooking, and you didn't let the fire try to overpower the ingredients. The sauce didn't pretend to be the star, either. Someone who can make a dish like this can change things too.”
He looked at me.
“I thought your cooking had no foundation, but you know the fundamentals and deliberately twist them. That's different.”
I bowed my head.
“That's too generous an assessment.”
“If it's too generous, does that mean you can fail next time?”
“That would be a problem.”
“Then keep going until it isn't too generous.”
His words weren't gentle, but he wasn't a bad person.
Olgren arrived a little later.
The moment he saw Albert, he bowed respectfully.
“Master, thank you for coming.”
Albert looked at him with his cane planted on the floor.
“I came because of your letter. A hundred chefs, you say? You've started quite a commotion.”
“I didn't start it. It's a project by Count Kleber and the Montbels.”
“You've gotten better at talking your way out of things. Have your skills improved much since before?”
“So-so.”
“What kind of business can you run with ‘so-so’?”
It felt like Albert was tearing into him too much, so I cut in.
“I'm about the same.”
“…Then that means you've become quite a good chef.”
Olgren smiled awkwardly.
I found the sight a little strange.
He had once been a proud chef who competed against me, but before his master, he clearly looked like a student again.
Even when someone becomes a head chef, they turn into something like their younger selves in front of their own master.
The same was true of me, actually.
When my retired master came to the restaurant as a guest, I probably turned back into the sniveling kid in his early twenties who used to cry in a corner of the kitchen.
“……”
What expression had my master worn at my funeral?
‘Let's put aside these stray thoughts.’
We left the restaurant and moved to a small meeting room in the Montbel estate.
Albert, Olgren, and me.
The three prospective judges sat facing one another.
Count Kleber was already waiting.
He was extremely excited.
With ledgers, blueprints, and promotional plans spread all over the table, he looked like a hunter who had spotted his prey.
“You've arrived. The sight of the three of you together is already splendid.”
Albert spoke the moment he saw Count Kleber.
“The food comes first.”
“Of course. Excellent food is what makes a successful event possible.”
“You like the word ‘success’ too much.”
“I do. Success means money.”
That sort of honesty could be frightening at times.
We began by discussing the judging criteria.
I spoke first.
“Taste comes first. Whether a dish has a story or decorations, if it doesn't taste good, it should be eliminated.”
Albert nodded immediately.
“I agree. And we need to look at fundamentals. Knife work, heat control, seasoning, and understanding ingredients. If those aren't in place and someone tries to show off with technique, they should be eliminated immediately.”
Olgren calmly added,
“I want to see execution and reproducibility. Someone can make one dish taste good by chance. But to serve it to guests in a restaurant, they need to be able to make it consistently.”
It was a good point.
I wrote it down in my notebook.
“Then the criteria will be taste, fundamentals, understanding of ingredients, execution, and reproducibility. We'll consider creativity, but deduct points if it harms the taste or fundamentals.”
Albert looked at me.
“Will creativity receive a separate score?”
“It should. But a low one. If we give high scores just for doing something strange, half of the hundred chefs will put nonsense on their plates.”
Olgren smiled slightly.
“That would be a problem.”
Albert snorted.
“At least you make sense.”
“Thank you.”
Marie chuckled softly behind me.
Just then, Count Kleber unfolded a blueprint as though he'd been waiting for the moment.
“We've chosen the location.”
I looked at the blueprint.
My head began to ache slightly.
“What is this?”
“The largest amphitheater in the capital.”
“You're holding a cooking competition in an amphitheater?”
“Yes.”
Count Kleber was completely unabashed.
“It was originally built by a tyrant of old to host gladiatorial matches. These days, it hosts plays, swordsmanship competitions, and public debates. It has spacious seating and a central stage, and we can divide it into noble and commoner sections. We'll arrange the workstations in a circle at the center so the audience can watch from all sides. We also plan to ask the Magic Tower for help handling the fire and smoke.”
I closed my eyes for a moment.
The scale had grown far too large.
Albert looked at the blueprint and said in a low voice,
“The chefs are going to cook in the middle of an amphitheater?”
“That's right.”
“Ridiculous.”
Count Kleber smiled.
“But people will come to watch.”
Albert was silent for a moment.
Then he gave a very small laugh.
“That is true.”
Olgren studied the blueprint carefully and said,
“The spacing between the workstations is important. Contestants using fire can't be too close to those doing delicate work. The ingredient storage area and the judges' movements should also be kept separate.”
I nodded.
“And the chefs will be thrown off by the audience. At the beginning of the preliminaries, it would be better to open only part of the seating and increase it as we move into the later rounds.”
Count Kleber immediately wrote that down.
“Good. The tension will build in stages. Excellent.”
“Don't take that as being only for the spectacle.”
“Operations and showmanship are friends.”
Albert looked at me with an exasperated expression.
“Is he always like that?”
“Yes.”
Olgren quietly added,
“You'll have to get used to him.”
“Horrible.”
Count Kleber wasn't hurt at all.
If anything, he looked even more delighted.
And so, the three judges and one businessman continued talking until late afternoon.
How to assign the challenges, how much to limit the ingredients, what criteria to use for elimination, and how much of the judges' comments to make public.
The longer the discussion went on, the more real the event became.
This might change the way people across the Empire viewed chefs themselves.
It was a good thing, but also an extremely tiring one.
As the meeting came to an end, Albert rose from his seat and said,
“Kyle Prat.”
“Yes.”
“I'll see more of your unconventional cooking. But if your fundamentals waver, I'll eliminate you first.”
“Can judges be eliminated too?”
“Of course. Shouldn't a judge be qualified to judge?”
He was a frightening old man.
But that wasn't necessarily bad.
I bowed my head.
“Then I'll learn the fundamentals from you too, Mr. Lanang.”
Albert looked at me for a moment, then raised the corner of his mouth ever so slightly.
“That attitude will do.”
After he left, Olgren also rose to his feet.
“Chef Kyle, this has gotten big.”
“Yes. Much bigger than I expected.”
“Still, I'm looking forward to it. Opportunities like this are rare.”
“So am I.”