Chapter 129: Florence’s Dawn (2)
Chapter 129: Florence’s Dawn (2)
“It’s good to see you again.”
Alan spoke in his usual composed voice. He hugged Rachel and Emily briefly, then looked at Jo Minjoon.
“Minjoon. Have you grown a little?”
“No. Even if the soles of my shoes get thicker, I don’t think I’ll get any taller.”
Jo Minjoon laughed and pointed at his shoes.
After greeting Anderson, Alan turned towards Jeremy and Sera.
“It’s been a while, Mr. Jeremy. I still hold the review you left after visiting my restaurant very close to my heart.”
“……Hmm. I don’t remember clearly. Did I compliment you?”
“Let me see. Among the things I remember, you said the apple rice cake I served for dessert was disgusting, and that everyone else had already praised me so much your stomach hurt, so you would refrain from adding to it. Something along those lines.”
“Hoho. People these days are busy. I don’t like repeating what everyone else has already said.”
Jeremy laughed naturally.
Perhaps Alan had no intention of arguing further, because he merely smirked, turned towards Sera, and smiled politely.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you. I’m Alan Craig. Just call me Alan.”
“Ah, yes. I’m Sera Keitch. It’s nice to finally meet you. You’re someone I’ve wanted to meet at least once.”
“Wait. Alan, you know Sera?”
“She appeared on the cover of Cuckoos magazine as the sexiest food critic in the world. Anyone who follows the culinary world would know her.”
“……But you don’t seem like the type to read magazines.”
Alan avoided answering and looked away.
Jeremy smirked beside him.
“Even people who don’t read magazines sometimes buy them. That’s how powerful a cover can be.”
“I see what you mean.”
Sera smiled like a model and glanced towards Emily.
Emily moved her lips sluggishly as though something bothered her, but in the end she said nothing.
“But why did you come, Alan? Ah, is it because of Teacher Rachel?”
“That’s the biggest reason. How could I not come when my teacher had returned?”
Alan gave Rachel a smile that seemed strangely unlike him.
Rachel cleared her throat.
Alan’s expression became serious.
“Thank you for coming back, Teacher. I’ve wanted to see you standing in a kitchen again.”
“………You didn’t study under me for very long, but your feelings are no different from the others.”
Rachel looked slightly moved.
Alan was still only in his mid-thirties. When Rachel had left the kitchen, he had barely been twenty-four, and naturally, he had studied under her for only a few years.
That made his feelings all the more touching.
Alan answered calmly, as though it were obvious.
“Just because something was short doesn’t mean it was shallow.”
Soon, they climbed into a van and headed towards Florence.
When they had first arrived at the airport, they had imagined beautiful buildings from the days of Rome greeting them immediately.
Instead, all they saw at first were flat land and wide roads.
Before long, Martin contacted them over the radio.
[Ah, ah. Can you hear me?]
“Yes. We can.”
[Right now, it’s somewhere between lunch and dinner. So I think it’d be fine for you to look around until evening. Alan, you know plenty of good places, right?]
“I even know how many buildings there are in Florence. Don’t worry.”
[How many are there?]
“Twenty thousand and thirty-two.”
Silence flowed through the radio.
Alan set it down as though he had won.
Anderson, who was concentrating on driving, asked,
“How do you know that?”
“I guessed.”
“……You guessed?”
Emily stared at him in surprise.
Alan shrugged.
“I don’t even know how many forks there are in my kitchen. How would I know the exact number of buildings in Florence? Still, Martin is probably checking right now to see whether I was right or just bluffing.”
“………You like teasing people too.”
“I’m not that vicious. I just enjoy teasing Martin.”
“Why Martin?”
“The last time he came to my restaurant, he vomited on the floor. Even after I told him to control himself with the alcohol……”
Jo Minjoon burst out laughing.
Then, as though something had occurred to him, he asked,
“Come to think of it, do you get many troublesome customers at your restaurant too? At least I can’t imagine many people picking fights over the flavour.”
“Why wouldn’t there be? Even when I was working at Teacher Rachel’s Rose Island in Venice, there was at least one troublesome customer every day.”
“What were they like?”
“I’ll answer that. There were people who spat into dishes, and sometimes even people who vomited into them. There were guests who smoked in VIP rooms even though they were designated non-smoking, simply because they thought being VIPs meant the rules didn’t apply to them. There were people who skipped out on the bill too. And only once, but someone pretended to find a dead cockroach in a dish after secretly placing it there themselves.”
“……That last one doesn’t sound like a troublesome customer. That sounds like someone with a serious problem.”
“That’s how people are. No matter how many customers tell you the food was delicious, that they had a wonderful time……one incident like that can erase all the good feelings you built up during the entire day.”
Rachel pouted regretfully.
Alan added,
“Anyway, now that most high-end restaurants operate mainly through reservations, those kinds of incidents are harder to see. Of course, restaurants that aren’t popular enough to fill their tables in advance are still more vulnerable. Reservations themselves create another problem too. Some people book and simply don’t show up, leaving you with an empty table and lost revenue. No-shows. You’ve heard of them, right?”
“Ah, yes. I really don’t understand that. All they have to do is make one phone call.”
“I don’t understand it either. But the problem is that things we can’t understand happen far too often. More restaurants than you’d think suffer badly because of no-shows. That’s why some places refuse reservations altogether.”
Alan sighed as though there was nothing anyone could do about it, then smirked at Jo Minjoon.
“Why? Are you already worrying about when you open your own restaurant?”
“I know. I’m thinking too far ahead.”
“No. That’s a good habit. But don’t waste your energy worrying about problems you can’t solve yet. There’s no reason to burden yourself mentally.”
“I’m trying not to. Still, I keep thinking about things like where I’d open my restaurant. For now, I suppose I need to build up more experience first.”
“If I had an opening at my restaurant, I’d call you……but honestly, even I don’t think it’s the best place to come if your goal is to learn Italian cuisine. Plenty of places in the US, and around the world, would welcome you. Perhaps……”
Alan glanced towards Rachel.
“It might even be somewhere closer than you think.”
Florence had suffered comparatively less wartime destruction than many other cities in Italy and Europe.
When Jo Minjoon saw centuries-old buildings still standing, along with the Duomo and Palazzo Medici Riccardi, he was more moved than he had been by the Thai royal palace.
(Translator’s Note: Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore / Florence Duomo— Florence’s cathedral, begun in 1296. Its enormous dome was designed by Filippo Brunelleschi and completed structurally in 1436, becoming one of the defining achievements of Renaissance engineering and architecture)
(Translator’s Note: Palazzo Medici Riccardi— A Renaissance palace commissioned by Cosimo de’ Medici and designed by Michelozzo. Construction began in 1444, and its restrained but monumental design became highly influential in later Renaissance palace architecture)
It was the first time he truly felt that buildings themselves could be works of art.
I want to open a restaurant somewhere like this.
“Let’s decide where to go.”
Emily spoke with hunger plainly visible in her eyes.
Just as she seemed to lose all restraint in front of delicious food, she also became noticeably sharper when hungry.
The fact that everyone could clearly tell she wanted to run somewhere and stuff herself with food somehow made her look even cuter.
Jo Minjoon spoke.
“I’m definitely curious about pasta.”
“Panini for me. Pizza would be good too.”
“You’ll have plenty of time, so you can eat all of those eventually. But first, you should take the edge off your hunger. I recommend a sandwich. There’s a very famous place nearby.”
Alan spoke.
Because he actually lived there, his recommendation naturally carried more weight.
Everyone nodded almost instinctively.
“Then let’s go.”
The place Alan brought them to looked somewhere between a food truck and a container stall.
Only three people worked inside the kitchen, taking orders and preparing food. In front of them hung a menu written in Italian.
Alan read it over.
“First, I’ll explain the basic structure. You choose your bread, then the meat and sauce you want inside.”
“……So it’s similar to sandwich shops in the US?”
“Structurally, yes. The flavour isn’t comparable, though. Trust me. Personally, I recommend the lampredotto made from beef stomach.”
(Translator’s Note: Lampredotto — A traditional Florentine street food prepared from the abomasum, the fourth stomach of cattle, slowly simmered and commonly served in a bread roll with sauce or seasonings. It has a long association with Florence’s working-class food culture.)
“Ah, wait a second.”
Sera’s eyes lit up.
She stepped forward and said something to the cook.
To Jo Minjoon, her Italian sounded quite fluent, though naturally he had no way of knowing how accurate it actually was.
A little later, Sera returned carrying a panino and handed it to him with a smile.
“I’ve never properly seen your absolute sense of taste in action. Can you show me?”
“………You’re surprisingly childish about certain things.”
“What can I do? I’ve always been curious, but before this I thought asking might be rude. I think we’re close enough now that I can ask things like this, aren’t we?”
“Give it here.”
“Ah, here.”
Sera watched him with sparkling eyes.
It was a little burdensome, but Jo Minjoon soon took a bite of the panino.
There were no grill marks, and the bread had remained fairly puffed.
Jo Minjoon preferred this style.
Pressing a panino created more toasted flavour and made the crust richer, but leaving it unpressed made it easier to appreciate the original texture and firmness of the bread itself.
Jo Minjoon studied it briefly.
Beside the panino, the system window displayed a cooking score of 7.
It was a good dish.
Roughly comparable to what Jo Minjoon himself normally made.
Lately, spending so much time around Rachel had made his standards stricter, but even so, it was more than good enough to enjoy.
The moment the food entered his mouth, the system displayed the ingredients.
Jo Minjoon deliberately ignored them.
For now, he wanted to see how much he could identify himself.
“………First, there’s definitely beef stomach. The onions and fresh basil were fried in olive oil……and there’s garlic and peperoncino too. Olives, simmered capers, rocket…… The tomato sauce has tomato, cream, one clove of garlic……well, some of the things I already mentioned appear there again. And……”
From that point onwards, he entered the system’s territory.
Jo Minjoon glanced briefly at the information and checked the things he had not been certain about.
Then he continued brightly.
“There’s white wine and honey. The honey surprises me a little. It seems like it was mixed into the sauce later.”
Two ingredients.
There were only two he had failed to identify on his own.
Was it because he had continued deliberately practising by concentrating on individual ingredients whenever he ate?
A proud smile appeared on his face.
Sera stared at him speechlessly.
“………Right. I don’t know the exact ingredients in the sauce, but you identified everything else that went into it.”
“Honestly, if you concentrate enough, you can do it too. Didn’t you say you normally practise identifying ingredients?”
“You do realise that has absolutely no credibility coming from someone with an absolute sense of taste, right? I’ve tried. I can’t do that.”
Sera pouted dejectedly.
Jo Minjoon felt strangely unsettled.
Sera’s tasting level was 8, the same as his.
And as far as he knew, his tongue itself was not particularly special.
At least, that was what he had believed.
Yet Sera said she could not do something he now could.
Does the system actually make my palate more sensitive too? Or……
Perhaps he had always been more sensitive than he realised.
While he was thinking, Sera approached the cook again with an uncertain expression and said something.
For a moment, the cook looked astonished.
But after hearing Sera out, he turned towards Jo Minjoon with obvious interest.
Then he took out several ingredients and began chopping them.
He chopped so finely that it almost looked as though he were grinding them into a paste.
Then he spread the mixture onto bread.
Watching from a distance, Jo Minjoon stared in dismay.
“You want me to eat that?”
“I want to know just how perfect an absolute sense of taste really is.”
Sera’s eyes shone.
For an food critic, it was only natural.
Having someone with an absolute sense of taste appear in front of her was like Beethoven suddenly appearing in front of a musician.
Even Emily, when she had first discovered Jo Minjoon’s ability, had tried to persuade him to become an food critic.
The newly prepared panino entered Jo Minjoon’s mouth.
(Translator’s Note: Panino / panini—means a small bread roll or sandwich; panini is the Italian plural. English usage often treats “panini” as singular, particularly for toasted or pressed Italian-style sandwiches.)
Everyone watched him nervously.
Gulp.
His Adam’s apple moved.
Then……
Jo Minjoon opened his mouth.