Caffe the One (2)

When people's eyes went round at the unexpected fruit skewers set on their plates, the youngest of them grinned.

"They're called danghoro. My sister told me that if I ever went to Caffe the One, I had to try them."

"Eat them? These?"

"Yes. Caffa smells wonderful, but it's a bit bitter and astringent. She says when your mouth feels dry after a cup, taking a bite of these is perfect."

The danghoro was, in fact, none other than tanghulu.

What Hwi-yeom had originally meant to debut at Caffe the One was not tanghulu, but cotton candy.

It was easy to imagine the stir a confection that looked like a cloud pulled down from the sky would cause, and the only ingredient required was sugar. Michelangelo had already helped build the machine. Hwi-yeom had figured they could simply make it and sell it.

But… the cotton candy was a failure.

The structure of the machine Michelangelo designed from Hwi-yeom's idea was extremely simple. Sugar went into a perforated spinning drum set over a brazier. Once the fire was lit, an operator sat on a bicycle-like apparatus linked by a drive chain of ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Michelangelo's design and worked the pedals. Through the chain and gear train, the vertical rotation of the pedals was converted into horizontal spin on the shaft, and the drum whirled furiously so that the melted sugar flung outward by centrifugal force. Catch that spun sugar on a bamboo stick, and cotton candy was complete.

That was the theory. Whether the sugar's purity was the problem, or whether a human-powered drum simply spun too slowly compared with a motor, the threads that came flying from the drum were not light, fine, and floating like cotton candy. They were more like sticky strands of starch syrup the thickness of glass fiber.

No amount of gathering them up could honestly be called cloudlike. After a moment's thought, Hwi-yeom tasted one.

Crunch.

The snap of sugar crystals that had melted once and then set again into a fine fibrous clump was oddly satisfying. Hwi-yeom decided to change course.

It doesn't have to be cotton candy. This has a market of its own.

While he was still turning over how to make it more popular, the tanghulu he had eaten in his previous life surfaced almost at once.

Classic tanghulu—bingdanghoro—is fruit brushed with boiled sugar syrup and lightly frozen so the shell sets crisp. If I roast this half-melted, half-set sugar onto the surface instead, the texture should come out roughly the same.

And so the machine intended for cotton candy became a danghoro maker.

Through that process, refined white sugar was melted, brushed over cornelian cherry fruit, and allowed to harden. The resulting danghoro looked thoroughly appetizing.

"Ahem. Well then… shall we try it?"

The staff all lifted the coffee cups set before them. Every cup was a disposable vessel cut from a joint of bamboo. Even in the modern world, customers walked off with shop crockery; Hwi-yeom saw no reason this era would be different, and had taken the precaution. The minor bonus of no washing and lower labor costs was a pleasant extra.

"So this is the tea they call hot Caffa. The aroma's convincing enough…"

They sniffed, savoring a scent they had never met, then carefully let it into their mouths.

Slurp…

"Ah—bitter!"

"What is this taste?"

The first reactions were not kind. The thick, bitter flavor, like scorched bean water, was simply too foreign.

"This isn't a mistake, is it?"

"Eat it with the danghoro."

"Oh. Right."

Without exception they bit into a danghoro—and their eyes flew wide.

"The crunch is fun."

"Sweet! That's good."

"Wait. Like this, the bitterness of the Caffa settles down."

Once sweetness joined the mix, smiles finally touched their faces.

"Look at that. Now I see it—they're meant to be eaten together."

With the sugar dulling the coffee's bite, they could at last enjoy the fragrance unfolding through their mouths. The distinctive tartness of the cornelian cherries cleanly erased the dry aftertaste left by each sip of Caffa.

"The aroma is remarkably deep and rich. It feels as if my sinuses have cleared all the way through."

"Even that bitterness, once you get used to it, makes the danghoro's sweetness feel more refined."

Tea was by nature a fragrant food, but few teas were as intensely aromatic or strongly flavored as coffee. No one produced the over-the-top reactions of a cooking manga, but they managed to enjoy the Caffa with reasonable satisfaction. That was thanks in part to the Caffa's own taste and scent—and in larger part to the satisfaction the danghoro delivered.

For medieval Chinese who, if they wanted something sweet, could only reach for fruit or the rare spoonful of honey, refined sugar was nothing short of violence upon the palate. Chewing danghoro while drinking Caffa produced a small crisis: the Caffa was not yet finished, but the danghoro was gone.

"Ah…"

One clerk stared at the empty plate and the lonely bamboo skewer left on it, smacking his lips. The section chief gave a dry laugh and drew a slip from his robes—a promissory note of Hwieon Comprehensive Finance, already circulating in Sichuan as freely as silver.

"Go buy more of that danghoro, kid."

"Yes, sir! Thank you!"

"Section Chief is the best!"

"You're amazing, sir!"

With a second round of danghoro in hand, the staff slowed down, savoring the taste and the Caffa's fragrance, and at last began talking as if they had remembered why they had come.

"So. What are the promotional and business strategies written up here?"

At the section chief's question, the clerks began offering their thoughts one by one.

"Starting a week before opening, whenever you dined at a Baekga-jaengsik franchise restaurant or ordered delivery, they handed out flyers with the meal. Collect ten flyers and bring them in today, and you could exchange them for one danghoro or one cup of hot Caffa. The way they used the existing dense franchise network for promotion really stood out."

"The exchange strategy was clever too. Flyers that might have been trash on the street—with this method, no one throws them away."

"If you keep them, you look at them again, and once you're collecting them, you naturally expose the people around you as well."

"The cleverest part is what they hand over when you bring the flyers—either one hot Caffa or one danghoro. Anyone who gets the hot Caffa is nudged into ordering danghoro, and anyone who gets the danghoro is nudged into ordering hot Caffa."

"The flyers themselves probably lift sales at the other Baekga-jaengsik restaurants too."

"Children who taste danghoro are going to lose their minds. They'll drag their parents here."

"Membership ranks and tiered stairs of privilege are strategies high-end wine houses, pleasure houses, and tea houses already use… but this interior is truly unmatched. Especially that magnificent lamp on the ceiling—what do you even call that? Doesn't it look as if the moon and stars have been locked inside the room?"

"The sculptures are so vivid they look ready to step down and walk, and the paintings look ready to leap out of the frame."

"Connoisseurs and the wealthy will love it for certain."

Talking and debating only brought more strengths to light. Conversation naturally led to more orders, and the staff's attention turned to the rest of the menu as well.

"Hot Caffa and danghoro are the basic set…"

"Black Sugar Hot Caffa—rich, deep black sugar for a dense, sweet taste. Oh…"

"Cold-Steeped Caffa—fresh beans steeped long in cool water to hold a deeper fragrance… they have that too."

"Hazelnut Hot Caffa—the king of Caffa, with a fierce and noble fragrance brought from the Western Regions? Whoa, look at the price."

In order: Americano, black-sugar Americano, cold brew, and hazelnut Americano. Hazelnuts had been imported from Turkey along the Silk Road as far back as the Tang dynasty, so supply through Ibn al-Nasir was available. The quantity was small and the aroma intense, so Hwi-yeom used them for premium marketing. To a modern eye the price abandoned all sense of ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠value, but people of high station with more money than they knew what to do with rather liked that.

As for the food:

"Rice cakes roasted in bean flour go surprisingly well with Caffa."

"Crisp-roasted rice cakes dipped in grain syrup are good too. Bitter Caffa just pairs well with anything sweet."

"Besides danghoro, what's black ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠horo, and why is it more expensive? Because of the black sugar?"

"I really like this… mattang. What crop is that from? It doesn't seem to be radish…"

Overall the spread felt inspired by the snack menus of famous twenty-first-century shaved-ice chains, yet to people of this age it was neither alien nor unsatisfying—it was thoroughly pleasing.

Even though Sichuan already produced and sold enough grain into Yunnan, Hwi-yeom was still buying grain from the inland Central Plains and circulating it through Sichuan. The point was to signal to the grain merchants of the Central Plains that he would not fight them to the death—not truly to the bitter end. The grain he bought, however, was not from Anhui, but from Henan and Guangdong.

By funneling profit to Shaolin Temple, which owned vast paddies in Henan, and to his in-laws of the Sama Family, Hwi-yeom meant especially to secure Shaolin's support and hold the Namgung Clan in check. That scheme—his insistence on buying Central Plains grain—won standing ovations from every executive of the Family Head's Office and every elder of the Elders' Council who had first reacted with skepticism.

"The Nine Great Noble Families and the Nine Sects and One Gang have never been on the easiest of terms. Using Shaolin's strength to check the Namgung Clan—truly a deft move!"

Sooner or later he would have to visit Shaolin in person, bearing a divine weapon of black iron forged by Guyaja-je. The Sama Family, for their part, were already bound by marriage and mutual interest.

Embrace an enemy by giving him profit—and more important still, give still greater profit to those who are already yours.

The Sama Family seemed to interpret this sharing of business gains and this path of coexistence as nothing more than the proverb about bowing even to the wife's family hitching post when the wife is beautiful—as proof that Hwi-yeom was thoroughly taken with Sama Yun. But—

Sama Family, you must become one body with the Dang Family.

Hwi-yeom meant to sink them so completely into the mire of profit that betrayal would become impossible.

In any case, buying rice from the Central Plains inevitably left a surplus. To keep market prices stable, that surplus was absorbed as relief grain by the Sichuan Provincial Administration and as military provisions by the Regional Military Command; whatever still remained after those stockpiles filled flowed entirely into the Sichuan Dang Family.

Faced with disposing of that rice and grain, the Sichuan Dang Family settled on brewing liquor, boiling grain syrup, and making rice cakes. Those cakes and that syrup were precisely what Caffe the One sold. Since they were retailed at a profit, the loss from importing unnecessary grain could be covered well enough.

Sweet potatoes grown in the trench plots were consumed at Caffe the One as well. Mattang made from sweet potato, thin sun-dried slices of dried sweet potato, and oil-fried sweet potato chips sold as if they were on fire.

In the end the clerks from Jangsan, who had come under the pretext of research, cheerfully worked their way through every food and drink on offer and only returned to the office late that evening.

"Ugh… I'm stuffed."

"You, kid—you're full without eating, aren't you? I saw you collecting the punch cards."

"Ah—ahahahaha… y-you noticed?"

"Anyway, this full, the post-meal drowsiness is going to be vicious… How are we supposed to work… tch."

But sleepiness was sleepiness, and work was work. Jangsan braced himself for drowsiness and took his seat. This was still an age before electric indoor lighting, so carbide lamps burned along the corridors and ceilings of the office, yet each man still had to light the personal lamp on his own desk. Jangsan lit his personal carbide lamp and began work—and soon realized something was strange.

No drowsiness came.

"Hey. Weird. I'm not sleepy at all."

"You too?"

The staff who had tasted Caffa began to murmur among themselves. People who had known only the modest caffeine of green tea had suddenly drunk coffee; the effect was incomparably stronger than anything a modern drinker dulled by overuse would feel. Only then did Jangsan remember the wording on the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠placard the Caffe the One guide had been holding.

"…I might end up drinking this every day."

Jangsan's thought was the shared verdict of everyone in Seongdo who had tasted Caffa.

And exactly one month later, at settlement, Caffe the One's revenue ranked first among every Baekga-jaengsik franchise.

The important thing was that this was only the beginning.

"We'll only truly begin once we've taken Beijing," Hwi-yeom said to Bak Chang-eon, who had been delivering the report with a pleased expression. "The gift for His Majesty the Emperor is nearly finished… Let's go collect it. Beijing."