I Served Bibimbap, and the Elf Said Irritably, 'Are You a Racist?'
I Served Bibimbap, and the Elf Said Irritably, 'Are You a Racist?'
As always, I was busy in the kitchen, getting ready for the day's customers.
After Camilla's visit, Doenjang-jjigae had joined the menu—and thanks to her enthusiastic promotion, or whatever you wanted to call it, the stew had become the talk of the territory.
Enthusiastic promotion.
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★★★★★
I, Camilla Wagon, say this.
Doenjang-jjigae—no, the Doenjang-jjigae made with freshly steamed tofu and Tuu brisket—is food of the gods.
It is so delicious that I pity any mouth that has never tasted it.
I have eaten countless dishes from all over the world, but I have never encountered anything this good.
Of course, adding Tuu meat makes it terribly expensive, so Chadol Doenjang-jjigae using meat-cow is also excellent. If even that is too difficult, Pog meat isn't bad either.
Yet people claim personal taste divides over Doenjang?
What a joke.
I refuse to associate with anyone who cannot appreciate that flavor!
If you want to succeed like me, then eat Doenjang-jjigae.
Recommended menu: Dubu Kimchi / Sundubu / Doenjang-jjigae / Tu!u!Cha!dol!Doen!jang!Jji!gae!
-Camilla Wagon, Head of the Golden Wagon Merchant Group-
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She had written a lengthy review on the largest sheet of paper hanging from the board outside the shop.
Worse, she had plastered it dead center, so even if you didn't want to see it, you had no choice.
A glowing endorsement from the second-wealthiest person in the empire.
"If you want to succeed, eat Doenjang-jjigae," it said, and for days the stew sold like crazy.
Camilla's retinue, of course—but the knights and soldiers at the castle, too, and even the farmers who usually only dropped by in the evening for a drink.
"One Doenjang-jjigae!"
"Same here!"
"Wait, why're you all eating something that smells so weird?"
"See, that's exactly why Tog's fields look the way they do. Wanna succeed, you've gotta eat it!"
"Hey, what the hell do my fields have to do with this?"
It became the dish eight out of ten people ordered.
How do I put this.
I now understood exactly how a restaurant owner feels when an influencer posts "this place is amazing~" and business suddenly explodes.
Even a fantasy world worked this way. It only made me imagine how much worse it had to be in Korea, with social media running everything.
Even Liana and Heimer fought over Doenjang-jjigae.
"Sir Heimer, you truly do not understand real flavor. Doenjang-jjigae is the food of successful people."
"No, this is not a dish for a knight. Wasting that magnificent Tuu meat in this way... the smell is practically excrement—ahem—in any case, the odor is severe, is it not?"
"That deep scent is precisely the richness that blooms in the taste!"
It felt like a pro-Doenjang faction versus an anti-Doenjang faction.
To be fair, the smell was unfamiliar to anyone in this world who had never encountered Doenjang.
If anything, Camilla was the odd one for falling head over heels for it at first sniff.
Even Liana, who praised Doenjang to the skies, still wrinkled her nose a little at the scent—she hadn't fully adjusted yet either.
In any case, business got a lot busier.
The shop was now packed every day.
People from outlying villages, like Conwell Village, started coming once the rumors spread.
"Folks back home say the food here is incredible."
Occasionally, merchants from nearby towns also stopped by.
I had thought things would quiet down after Camilla left the territory. Instead, we were busier than when she had been here.
"I'll be dropping by often from now on."
"Feel free to visit anytime. Our doors are always open to guests."
"Then, a place this good closing down would be a loss for the entire empire, wouldn't it."
"Is that so?"
"You are absolutely forbidden from shutting this place down. Absolutely."
If I felt an odd prickle of danger at her parting words, it was probably just my imagination.
Right?
She was heading back to the capital, busy with her own affairs.
There was no reason for her to keep worrying about a backwater like this.
When I had been talking with Kobi while we made tofu, he had mentioned that a massive mining zone had recently opened up in the northeastern region and she would soon be swamped with bidding for the rights.
Did he say it was a mine that even produced magic stones?
At any rate, the frantic rush had passed, and I was catching a brief moment of calm when the door opened.
Clomp, clomp.
Unlike the other customers, a woman with her hood pulled low over her eyes strode inside.
"Koff, koff! Hack!"
Apparently startled by the smell of Doenjang, she coughed and looked around.
The deep hood made her face hard to see, but she was definitely biting her lip.
An outsider.
The sword at her hip, the leather armor peeking from beneath her robe, the tensely poised stance—everything marked her as an adventurer.
This was my first time seeing an adventurer here.
Catching the Doenjang-newbie's reaction, the other customers glanced at her and snickered.
As if they hadn't looked exactly the same just a few days ago.
It reminded me of fifth-week recruits in basic training smirking at the fresh arrivals.
To me, though, it was just adorable newbies putting on a show.
"Welcome!"
I couldn't just leave a customer standing there, so I greeted her loudly.
The woman adventurer locked eyes with me and strode over without hesitation.
She stopped right in front of me, sniffed the air, bit her lip again, and spoke.
"You are the one, aren't you? The knight who killed my Tuu."
"..."
Judging by the atmosphere, she wasn't a customer.
Suddenly I noticed two long ears poking out from under her hood.
An elf?
I knew them as a nature-loving race who refrained from killing.
In fact, they loved nature so much that they practiced vegetarianism. That was the elf way.
If not for their insufferably arrogant personalities, their beauty and near-immortal lifespans might have let them conquer the continent.
No wonder a Tuu had shown up where it didn't belong.
This elf was probably the reason.
Surely it wasn't something like a familiar?
This was a problem.
"That's right. Are you the owner of the Tuu?"
"Something like that."
"I'm the one who killed it, but the situation was unavoidable."
"Unavoidable?"
"Yes. It was right about to attack the village."
"I saw the evidence. I came after confirming exactly why you had no choice but to kill the Tuu."
So she's more reasonable than I expected.
"Then is it also true that you shared the Tuu meat with the knights here?"
"Yes."
"And the soldiers guarding the gate must have eaten it as well."
With that, she removed her hood.
Rippling golden hair cascaded down, and deep blue eyes stared straight at me.
She was strikingly beautiful.
The robe had covered the lower half of her face, but that hadn't been able to hide it.
They say all elves are gorgeous.
They weren't kidding.
And right there, unmistakable: the long ears.
"In that case, I demand an apology!"
Every gaze in the room fixed on those pointed, elongated ears.
"An elf?"
"Is that an elf?"
"Why is an elf here?"
So she really was an elf.
I hadn't been mistaken.
"An apology—what do you mean?"
"You killed my Tuu. I should receive appropriate compensation, shouldn't I?"
"As I said, there were circumstances."
"That's one thing, but my Tuu isn't coming back."
She wasn't wrong.
The Tuu was already dead, digested, inside our stomachs. It wasn't about to come back to life.
Still, I couldn't just apologize endlessly with no plan.
Like I had said, we'd had our own reasons.
"I'll offer some compensation. But people could have died."
"I am aware of that. I won't make this burdensome."
She finished speaking and seated herself in one of the chairs facing the kitchen.
"I hear this place is a restaurant."
Having shed her robe and hung it beside her, the elf fixed me with an unveiled, striking gaze.
"Elves do not repay blade with blade. That is the conduct of savage races. Nor do we accept money. That, too, does not suit our people."
She declared in a confident voice,
"However, I will not ask a human to follow elven tradition. I want to be served the dish you have the most confidence in."
"Food, you mean?"
"Yes. Looking at the expressions on the people here, you seem to have some skill. Just how good must it be for people to eat in a restaurant that smells of manure?"
"Pfft!"
That was Heimer, unable to hold back his laugh at the "manure" comment.
Hmm.
Food, then.
As payment for killing someone's familiar Tuu, this was a bargain.
"Understood."
An elf meant a vegetarian diet, and a vegetarian diet meant Korean food.
Honestly, was there any race better suited to Korean cuisine than the elves?
I could put together a meatless meal anytime she wanted.
Just how many vegetarian dishes could I make right this moment?
The Doenjang-jjigae I had recently added, Dubu Kimchi, Dubu Jorim, Kimchi-bokkeumbap, and if I assembled an array of banchan, I could even serve Bibimbap with a dollop of Gochujang to mix everything together—plus stir-fried mushrooms and all kinds of seasoned greens.
I could also manage meatless Ssambap easily.
Fresh vegetables and some Ssamjang—wasn't that Ssambap right there?
Then there was Deulkkae Siraegi-guk, Gondeure-bap, and Jeolbap—a full vegetarian spread.
Even Gimbap could be made vegetarian by leaving out the egg, ham, and crab stick.
People's tastes would vary, but at minimum, a vegetarian meal wouldn't have to lack for nutrition.
Of course, a lot of the dishes I thought of weren't possible on the spot because I was missing ingredients.
I glanced over the remaining supplies.
Right, tofu is delicious, so...
I'd build the meal around tofu.
I immediately heated oil in a pan and started stir-frying kimchi.
I settled on the menu for my unexpected elven guest.
Stir-fried kimchi paired with Dubu Kimchi, which was at its best eaten together with the kimchi—Doenjang-jjigae, which she had already said smelled like manure and clearly disliked—and a Bibimbap mixing the banchan together with Gochujang.
That was the three-piece vegetarian set I had in mind for her.
While the kimchi sizzled in the oil, I quickly brought the Doenjang-jjigae to a boil.
At the same time, I pulled out every banchan I normally kept for sides.
The seasoned kongnamul I had grown from the beans Camilla sourced, the stir-fried mushrooms, the hobak-bokkeum, the radish kimchi cool enough to chill your bones, and a vegetable stir-fry of shredded potato and carrot—I arranged them neatly in the bowl.
"Beautiful."
The brightly colored vegetables all asserted their presence.
Then I took the perfectly stir-fried kimchi and the still-warm tofu, sliced the tofu into bite-size pieces, and transferred them into the bowl.
I topped the array of vegetables with freshly cooked rice, and finally placed a dollop of red Gochujang over it all.
"Almost forgot."
Can't leave out the sesame oil and sesame seeds.
I hadn't even been able to put on a fried egg, and if I skipped these too, the flavor would turn way too flat.
What I had made was a bibimbap in the spirit of those quick, throw-it-all-in-a-big-bowl bibimbaps you make at home when you're hungry—rice, banchan, and a squeeze of Gochujang, briskly mixed together.
A stir-fried anchovy side dish plus a fried egg would have made it perfect.
That part stung.
Still, for anyone refusing meat for whatever reason, I had just presented them with an ideal vegetarian meal—and I set it down in front of the elf.
"A complete vegetarian meal for an elf."
The elf, who had waited calmly for the food, looked at me.
Her eyes were fierce.
Glaring at me with her brow deeply furrowed, her gaze practically sparked.
It looked like she might draw her sword at any second.
"Innkeeper, are you a racist?"
Was she calling me a racist?
What the hell was this?
"What are you—"
"I am asking if the innkeeper is one of those uncivilized imperials with that idiotic stereotype firmly lodged in his skull—that all elves eat only vegetables."
"..."
"Why is there no meat in this food? That is what I was hoping for when I made the request."
Wait, elves ate meat?