I Hate the Ordinary
I hate things that are ordinary.
Within the next hour, I would take this guy down.
Having steeled myself with that resolve, I handed Adrian the menu as if throwing down a gauntlet.
“What will you be ordering?”
“Let’s see… I think I’ll go with the steak set.”
Ah, playing it by the book, are we.
I carefully noted it on the order slip and took the menu back.
“Then I’ll prepare the appetizer first.”
The moment I returned from taking the order, I started tossing the salad.
Lettuce, tomato, and a bit of soft cheese, finished with a quick circle of vinegar.
A light appetizer meant to whet the appetite, its mild flavors overlaid with a bright acidity.
Because the cheese kept the raw edge of the vegetables in check, the balance was actually quite solid.
As I plated the salad, I glanced at the clock and roughly estimated the time it would take.
Salad: five minutes. Steak: ten. Dessert: five.
Pure cooking time was only twenty minutes; even if he ate at a leisurely pace, the whole meal wouldn’t stretch past forty.
With this, I can definitely do it…!
Assuming no unexpected variables, I could get through this without running into Roxana.
…Or so I had been certain.
“Your appetizer—the salad.”
“Ah, thank you.”
A thought suddenly struck me.
Perhaps what that guy really wanted to eat wasn’t “this kind of dish” at all.
There was a clear reason I reached that conclusion while watching the dining room from the kitchen.
Left alone at a table, a customer becomes more honest than anyone else.
Most guests, busy with the idea that the kitchen is occupied with cooking, never imagine someone might be watching them…
But I do watch.
When things get frantically busy there’s no choice, yet checking a customer’s reaction and adjusting is one of the most important parts of the job.
So, as always, I observed his response.
“I can’t tell if he’s eating it or not…”
Adrian stared at the plated salad with an expression that had clearly lost all interest.
He poked it once or twice with his fork, forced a single bite into his mouth…
and then never touched it again.
Instinct honed by long experience and observation told me the truth.
At this rate, the meal was going to fail.
“For someone who calls himself the crown prince to start picking and choosing from the very first course is a problem…”
That wasn’t simply the reaction of someone who disliked salad.
Anyone accustomed to imperial cuisine would be familiar with the taste of this kind of appetizer.
It couldn’t be a childish tantrum about not liking vegetables.
Therefore the most reasonable explanation was…
that he simply disliked the entire repertoire of standardized formal dining.
I had never met anyone like that in my life, so I couldn’t be certain of the exact reason, but I could make an educated guess.
Adrian had probably encountered this style of cooking far too often.
Given his station, first-class course meals prepared by the finest chefs would have been daily fare.
So if he came looking for something different only to be served the same thing again, how would that feel?
Especially if the restaurant produced exactly the same dishes as the imperial kitchen—only with inferior ingredients, facilities, and staff…
The comparison would be all too easy, and all too unflattering.
Once I thought that far, his reaction made perfect sense.
In the end, the problem was that it was simply too ordinary.
I had never met anyone who disliked course cuisine, yet here I was, finally encountering one.
“But changing the course at this point would be awkward, time-wise…”
It was troublesome in every way—time and ingredients alike.
I could simply pretend not to notice and serve what he had ordered.
Perhaps that would even be the wisest choice.
Adrian might be a little dissatisfied, but I would avoid a headache, so I would be content.
But.
“I can’t just stand by and watch that happen…!”
Once someone steps into my restaurant, they are a customer—no exceptions.
Even if that someone is the future tyrant who blocked my path countless times while I was playing Chronicles of Lodoros, my principles admit no exceptions.
I am simply the sort of person who cannot bear to watch a customer leave unsatisfied.
Cursing my own stubbornness, I glared at the beef in front of me.
I brought the knife down mercilessly on the sirloin that was supposed to become a steak.
Now that it had come to this, I had no choice but to cook for him properly.
A dish that would satisfy that guy? I could think of one in an instant.
Come to think of it, there was a dish called shashlik…
Simply put, shashlik is Russian-style skewered meat.
Meat and assorted vegetables threaded onto skewers and grilled over charcoal.
I had my reasons for choosing that particular style of cooking.
Watching Adrian wait silently in the dining room, I could pick out a few traits.
Trained arms. A solid, angular build.
The academy uniform made it hard to notice at a glance, but what it meant was clear.
The classic physique of a martial artist.
Despite holding the lofty status of crown prince, Adrian possessed that nature.
It wasn’t merely that he never neglected his training; something about him felt slightly off-kilter for a prince.
And considering how freely he had shown competitive spirit the moment he heard about Glen…
This guy suited the title of warrior far better than crown prince.
That was why I deliberately chose such a primitive cooking method.
“Luca, bring me every vegetable in the refrigerator.”
“Yep. Got it.”
Still, the less technique a dish required, the more important the role of spices became.
Shashlik had a sauce based on onion and vinegar, but suppressing the meat’s own aroma still needed help from pepper, cumin, and the like.
It was undeniable that the dish usually relied on spices to hide any off-flavors in the meat.
Unfortunately, the only spices I currently possessed were chili powder and rock salt.
“Here! I brought everything there was!”
“Well done, Luca.”
I patted the head of Luca, who had already become an excellent kitchen assistant, and checked the ingredients I had.
Among the various vegetables, certain ones caught my eye.
Onion, green onion, garlic…
A combination any Korean would find painfully familiar.
Pap-pap-pat—!
I picked up a well-ripened, round onion and sliced it into thin strips.
Thud, thud, thud—
I crushed the garlic and minced it to a somewhat coarse texture.
“No spices, but I do have aromatic vegetables.”
I placed the sirloin I had previously cut into cubes into a large bowl.
Over it I dumped the julienned onion and minced garlic, added salt and vinegar, and mixed thoroughly.
In short, it was a marinade.
A method of lightly seasoning the meat to achieve various effects.
With no spices available, it was the best move I could make.
“Next… I need skewers.”
Come to think of it, did I even have anything suitable?
This style of grilling required metal rods, and the shop had none prepared.
Naturally—unless a restaurant specialized in this kind of dish, it wouldn’t stock such skewers.
What to do?
“Ah, wait a second…”
As I turned the problem over in my head, a sudden flash of inspiration struck.
“Luca. Run to the blacksmith’s right this instant.”
A man with the bearing of a warrior deserved a presentation to match.
…
Surprisingly, Adrian had a refined palate.
He was only a bodyguard, not royalty, yet living within the imperial household meant frequent exposure to such cuisine.
In fact, the imperial family had actively encouraged it.
Only by becoming familiar with a wide variety of flavors could one detect poison by subtle differences in taste when tasting for the emperor.
Thus he had grown up on meals so lavish that the phrase “delicacies of mountain and sea” felt inadequate.
Given that experience, he could confidently claim his discernment in this area was far from low.
“I don’t understand.”
That was why Adrian could only mutter those words.
It sounded half like disappointment, half like genuine puzzlement.
“What about this place could have moved her heart?”
From the appetizer alone, he could tell.
This was nothing more than the kind of ordinary dining you could find anywhere.
No special difference from the imperial kitchen, no outstanding technique.
Moreover, the quality of the ingredients was inevitably inferior to the palace’s—
so of course Adrian was left wondering.
Why was Roxana drawn to cooking that was merely a lesser version of the imperial table?
He was still sunk deep in that question when a bright voice pulled him out of it.
“Sorry to keep you waiting.”
Or perhaps what woke him was the smell.
Before the dish even entered his field of vision, the aroma of charcoal fire rushed in.
Charcoal that could easily have smelled acrid instead carried a strangely savory note; when he lifted his head toward it…
Adrian could only stare in shock.
What lay before him looked like a graveyard of swords.
“An exotic skewer dish—shashlik!”
Daggers thrust indiscriminately into a loaf of bread that served as a stand.
Threaded onto those daggers were meat and vegetables seared over charcoal.
Only then could Adrian admit it.
In his entire life, he had never seen a dish like this.