A Picky Palate Is Exhausting
Thud.
Like a puppet with its strings cut, I flopped face-first onto the bed.
“Ugh… I’m going to die.”
I had risen at the crack of dawn to make sandwiches, run the cafeteria through lunch at the Academy, and only just returned after a full slate of afternoon lectures. By this point my thoroughly exhausted body was starting to scream threats at me.
Hey, you. If you don’t fall asleep right this second, you’re in for a world of hurt.
Even so, I resented the fact that I still couldn’t just pass out.
“I still have to do the prep work for tomorrow’s lunchboxes…”
Even after finishing this murderous schedule, tomorrow’s prep still waited for me. I had expected as much, but now that it was actually upon me, the bone-deep fatigue was unavoidable.
“Boss, food.”
After I had been lying face-down on the bed for quite some time, a head suddenly poked into view. It was Luca, who had been watching the restaurant the entire time I was out.
“Ahh, Luca… please let me rest just a little longer…”
“Carmilla… tired? Not working?”
I stroked Luca’s head as he tilted it at me, and felt a tiny bit of healing. Kneading those warm, soft ears improved my mood considerably. It might have been rude to say about a beastman, but in moments like this I almost felt like I was raising a puppy. He still hated having his belly rubbed, but if I took the time to get him used to it… heh heh.
“Yes… I’ll make dinner a little later, so…”
“No, wrong. Guest downstairs. Wants food.”
“Did you just say… a guest?”
“Yeah.”
Huh.
At that unexpected answer, my thoroughly lethargic mind snapped wide awake.
“Haa… I forgot, just for a moment, why we hung a bell on the restaurant door.”
I mentally jotted “install a doorbell” onto my to-do list and sprang up from the bed. I flipped the switch inside my heart from OFF to ON, completed the mental gear-shift in an instant, and switched over to business mode.
“Welcome, dear guest.”
I stepped out into the hall with that greeting, only to find—
“For someone who told me to come visit with confidence, this place is pretty shabby.”
The previous day’s troublemaker. The girl with the striking red ponytail—Roxane—was standing there.
“Oh my, Roxane… what brings you here?”
“What other reason would a person have for coming to a restaurant?”
With that, she sat herself down at a table and made her demand as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
“Heh. Aren’t you going to take my order?”
And still that sly little grin. Compared to last time, the distance between us somehow felt closer… or was that just my imagination?
“Of course. Guests are always welcome.”
I had more or less expected this. My original target had been the Crown Prince’s side, but her reaction had been far more enthusiastic. Watching her polish off that sandwich while making every excuse under the sun—poison, delayed effects, whatever—I had judged that her sense of taste was rather similar to my own.
So had she come purely because she wanted food that suited her palate?
“By the way, don’t you have a menu or anything?”
“Here you are.”
I handed her the menu I had written out earlier. Most of the items had been filled with Western dishes like beef steak, tailored to the Academy students’ tastes and the period setting… but as Roxane’s eyes traveled up and down the list, her expression said none of it appealed to her.
“Something… not like this. Don’t you have anything else?”
“If there’s something you want that isn’t on the menu, I’ll make it for you.”
“Oh, really?”
Color returned to Roxane’s face at those words, but immediately afterward she seemed to hesitate. More accurately, she looked embarrassed rather than hesitant… though the emotional swings of a girl her age were truly inscrutable.
“Um… you know that sandwich I had earlier today?”
“Hmm, it seems you rather liked it. If you wish, I can prepare a few more.”
“No, no! That was delicious too, but I was wondering if you had any other dishes in that same… vibe.”
‘That sort of thing’ appealed to her, did it.
I turned the thought over for a moment, and then—flash—inspiration struck.
I had it. I was certain.
“Your order has been received.”
I spun on my heel and headed for the kitchen. To capture that inspiration before it could evaporate, my hands flew into motion.
“H-hey, are you sure that’s what you want?”
There were several clues. First, the incident earlier in the day. Judging by how thoroughly she had enjoyed the sandwich I made, I could draw a number of inferences. No matter that she was a bodyguard by rank, she still belonged to the Imperial household. She would have been in an environment where high-class cuisine was readily available—caviar, foie gras, truffles, the finest steaks and lobsters, every delicacy I could imagine was served in the palace. I took pride in my cooking, of course, but there was no way I could compete with ingredients of that caliber. It would be like trying to win a one-on-one duel with a dagger against a halberd.
And yet Roxane’s preference for that sandwich had been extraordinary. Watching her pursue my cooking so eagerly was almost flattering… but for someone who ordinarily ate cuisine of that level, something about her reaction was off-kilter. The contrast with oatmeal porridge might have played a part, but the normal reaction in that case should have been more like, “Well, I guess this is better than nothing.”
Second: none of the dishes on the menu had appealed to her. Before my reincarnation I had earned a Western cuisine cooking license in preparation for opening a restaurant, and I had plenty of experience in that field, so I knew the processes and principles thoroughly. The composition of the menu I had given her was therefore quite orthodox, and I had even taken care to match the historical flavor I remembered from the game. And yet if she was rejecting every single option in favor of “that thing from earlier,” then the answer had been decided from the start.
The issue was not absolute level of taste—
It was preference.
“Your appetizer is ready.”
“Whoa… what is this?”
I had cut the leftover crusts from the morning’s sandwich-making into neat squares. I deep-fried those crusts in oil until they turned a crisp golden brown. After shaking off the excess oil, I tossed them in sugar and brought them out in a dish. What now sat on the table was a pile of crunchy, sweet little bites of bread.
“These are called rusk.”
At my introduction, Roxane’s eyes lit up. She picked up one of the brown, glistening pieces, turned it this way and that, even sniffed it… and then popped it into her mouth. A cheerful crunch rang out.
Crunch-!
“Whoa… I’ve never eaten anything like this…!”
Rusk was generally treated as a cheap snack. The recipe had originally been invented to recycle bread crusts that would otherwise have been thrown away. Nutritionally speaking, it was nothing but a junk snack packed with carbohydrates, oil, and sugar. Any Imperial chef with half a brain would have strictly controlled even the possibility of such low-grade carb bombs reaching members of the Imperial household. For that reason, a snack like this would never have been found in the palace… which meant that to Roxane, its very existence was completely novel.
“Crispy, and sweet… and so savory! I can’t believe something like this existed—I feel like I’ve been missing out on life…”
Watching her eat with such relish made a cook’s characteristic sense of pride bloom in my chest, but at the same time I felt a strange sense of guilt. This girl’s palate had been cultivated on expensive cuisine by Imperial chefs. And yet here I was—a lowly commoner—corrupting that carefully raised taste with this cheap snack. Was that really all right?
“Heh heh… of course it is. Absolutely.”
Corruption, though. That expression was wrong. From the beginning, Roxane’s palate had simply been rather plain. It was not hard to understand. When you ate high-class cuisine every single day, dishes of this sort started to feel precious instead. It was the classic cliché of a rich young master falling head over heels for instant ramen the first time he tried it. To put it bluntly, Roxane was a total junk-food palate.
“Now then… shall we move on to the main course?”
Having reached that conclusion, I prepared a dish that would pierce her preferences perfectly. I boiled water in a pot and dropped in a couple of bright yellow ears of corn. Once they were cooked through, I stood them upright and ran a knife down the cobs to strip off the kernels. I spread the cut kernels out to cool and dry while I lit the burner and heated a pan.
Sizzle-!
When the pan was hot enough, I dropped in a knob of butter. The distinctive aroma of butter wafted all the way out of the kitchen.
“That smells amazing… what are you making this time?”
Roxane’s expression, as she peeked from across the way, was practically melting.
I must have hit her preferences dead-on…
Meanwhile the butter had melted nicely. Into the pan swimming with melted butter I added the cooled, moisture-free corn kernels and began to stir-fry them. The smell was somehow reminiscent of movie-theater popcorn, and even I felt rather cheerful while cooking. Of course, the ingredient I reached for next was one that would never go into popcorn.
Mayonnaise.
I still had a fair amount left from the jar I had obtained that morning, so I added a generous amount. Then a sprinkle of sugar… and finally, soft cheese I had bought from the nearby grocer—in other words, mozzarella—scattered evenly over the top. I covered the pan and let it melt gently for several minutes.
“Ignition.”
With a touch of magic to stand in for a kitchen torch, I lightly scorched the surface of the cheese. What emerged was nothing less than a secret weapon—a dagger aimed straight at the heart of a junk-food palate.
My proud Korean specialty: corn cheese.