[Raccoon Man Beginning]
[Raccoon Man Beginning]
Not long after we ordered, the waiter brought the champagne and appetizer bread.
"Here is the champagne and appetizer bread you ordered."
We chose champagne instead of wine... well, not the red wine people usually think of when they hear "wine." The dishes we ordered were all different, and I was too lazy to think about which wine would pair well with each, so I just settled on champagne.
The carbonation in the champagne would wash away the taste of the previous dish, making it good for eating the next one. That's why I chose it.
The appetizer bread came with a small brown baguette, a round squid ink bread, and two types of butter.
One was round and looked like plain butter, but the other was square, divided into a 3x3 grid, and some parts were pink.
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Is it cheese that looks roughly like this? It was so pretty I didn't even want to touch it.
I cut a piece of bread and tried it with the butter. The round one was unsalted butter, and its savory flavor was excellent. It was so tasty I could have just eaten this to fill up.
"This one is salty."
"Really?"
Unlike the unsalted butter, the square one had a salty flavor that was excellent. They say the sweet-and-salty combo is the best, after all. And if you add a savory flavor to that, it's the icing on the cake. Ah, but the square one tastes a bit like ham... wait, is this pink part ham?
While we were chatting and eating about half the bread, the appetizers came out.
"Basil Sorbet with tomato concassé, and pea soup."
I had the Basil Sorbet, and Sion had the pea soup. The red tomato was sliced into a concassé, topped with a paprika salad, and a green, cream-like lump of Basil Sorbet shaped into an oval greeted me.
Sion's dish didn't look like anything special other than the plating, but it smelled incredibly savory and good. It seemed like several other spices had been added.
"Surprising. Even if you don't get heavy meat dishes for appetizers, I didn't expect you to willingly eat something made of vegetables."
"I do eat like this sometimes. Who do you take me for, a picky eater?"
Honestly, you are.
Sion is a total picky eater. She mostly likes meat, sweets, salty food, and greasy food—the kind of stuff you should eat if you want to live a short life. If Sion weren't an alien but a human, her blood vessels would have committed suicide long ago due to her poor eating habits.
I did get her to develop a taste for vegetables by cooking at home, but even then, she was just a "meat-eater who wraps meat in lettuce" type.
Since it was an appetizer, heavy dishes wouldn't be served, so she would avoid meat, but even though fish dishes would likely be served, Sion chose that. Honestly, I was a bit surprised.
"I like peas."
"Is there anyone who hates peas?"
"Prison inmates probably hate them."
"Beans are expensive these days, so the whole 'prison food is just bean rice' thing is a thing of the past."
In the past, people thought eating mixed grains was proof of poverty, so there was high demand for pure white rice. These days, people mix in grains on purpose to stay healthy. If you just keep eating white rice, you'll get sick.
I tasted the sorbet. You might not be able to imagine the taste of a herb like basil made into something like ice cream. But the world of cuisine often exceeds imagination. They make ice cream out of vegetables, so why would herbs be any different?
Strictly speaking, sorbet and ice cream are different due to their ingredient content... but well, to someone who doesn't know, they're about the same. The difference is that ice cream is soft, and sorbet has a slightly crunchy, icy texture.
You might have eaten it when you were young. There's that ice cream in round packaging called Darong Darong that comes in melon and orange flavors. That's also classified as a sorbet.
If you don't know that either, just think of the frozen Juicy Cool sold at the stationery store in front of the school as being a bit softer. Surely there's no one who hasn't even had Juicy Cool.
"What is Juicy Cool?"
"No, you don't even know that?! Then at the very least, you know the white apple-flavored ice cream you scoop out from the bottom of a Double Bianco, right? That's a sorbet."
"I'm joking. I've had frozen 300-won Juicy Cool when I was a kid. I'd get 500 won in allowance and use the remaining 200 won to try a one-coin run of Metal Slug at the stationery store."
"You're different from me, so this must be your second playthrough. You're from a generation quite similar to mine."
Roughly the 1990s, I guess. If it were earlier than that, our generations wouldn't match up like this.
Anyway, I cut the Basil Sorbet with a spoon, scooped it up with the paprika salad and tomato concassé, and put it in my mouth.
The first thing I felt was the sweetness of the sliced tomato; since the seeds and skin were removed, I could taste the pure flavor of the tomato.
Next, the Basil Sorbet melted, leaving a crunchy texture, and then the aroma blended with the sweetness of the paprika. The main ingredients were basil, tomato, and paprika, but it was delicious even without any meat. It's a taste that would make vegetarians cheer. Ah, the problem is whether there's dairy in the sorbet.
"Want to share? I'll give you a bite."
"I'll pass."
"......Well, I guess you'll eat it willingly since it's a vegetable that doesn't even look like a vegetable anymore."
"That's not it."
Like hell it isn't.
Among the vegetables Sion hates, bell peppers or paprika are at the top of the list. She eats garlic or onions occasionally because the spicy taste disappears when cooked, but she hates bell peppers or paprika because they have a slight bitter aftertaste even when cooked.
Tomato... she hates eating raw tomatoes too. The only tomato Sion eats is ketchup or tomato sauce made for pasta.
Huh? You're asking if ketchup and tomato sauce aren't the same thing?
Then aren't LoL and Heroes of the Storm just the same AOS games?
"This is good. Meat is naturally delicious, so it's a given it'll taste good unless you really mess it up, but cooking vegetables this deliciously is proof of skill. Ah, can I have a spoonful of the pea soup?"
"Here you go."
I scooped a spoonful from the bowl Sion held out and put it in my mouth. The savory flavor of the peas and the thick texture from being well-ground hit me, followed by the taste of spices that added depth to the flavor. They used strong spices as a supporting act to bring out the flavor of the main ingredient, the peas.
This is good, too. It's worth Sion, who doesn't eat many vegetables, eating it voluntarily.
After finishing the appetizer and cleansing our palates, the next main course arrived right on time.
"Chicken Sous-vide with romaine lettuce. And Hanwoo Striploin Steak with mushroom ravioli as a garnish."
The essence of a course meal is the main course. You can see the chef's effort to satisfy the customer. Furthermore, the range of ingredient selection widens.
Unlike the appetizer, you don't need to worry about it not being too heavy, and unlike dessert, you don't need to think about sweetness. Only taste—taste to satisfy the customer—is important.
I chose the Chicken Sous-vide, and Sion chose the steak. Looking at the menu choice, it's meat that Sion loves, and beef at that.
"The visuals are good."
The Chicken Sous-vide I chose was a chicken breast the size of two index fingers put together, and next to it, long romaine lettuce was cooked and placed. A transparent brown sauce was drizzled over it, and finally, a small lump of black grains was placed on top of the chicken.
Sion's steak looked like a normal steak if you only think about the cooked meat, but the garnish was unique. If you call it ravioli, it's a type of pasta, but if it's hard to imagine, just think of it as Italian-style dumplings.
But it wasn't just dumplings placed there; the square, golden-brown crust that looked like Hanetsuki Gyoza stood out....... Wait, you don't know what Hanetsuki Gyoza is?
Hanetsuki Gyoza refers to a method of making gyoza in Japan where you pour starch water over the dumplings in a frying pan to create a crispy, pancake-like crust on the bottom. The taste isn't that different, but the visuals are amazing.
"Shall we eat?"
To fully enjoy the main course, I picked up my cutlery immediately. I first brought my fork to the chicken.
The chicken was the breast part. There's a perception that chicken breast is dry. Of course, that's natural; the chicken breast people usually encounter has high protein content, and protein shrinks when cooked.
But the sous-vide method is different.
Sous-vide is a cooking method where ingredients are put in a sanitary plastic bag and cooked for a long time in water at a constant temperature. It takes a few hours at a minimum, and sometimes a day or two.
The advantage of this method is that it can cook parts that would become dry when cooked, like chicken breast, to be tender. It seems like it would take a lot of effort, but a restaurant like this would at least have a sous-vide machine.
Behold! This chicken breast that tears apart so easily!
"The chicken is art. I wish we had a sous-vide machine at home."
"Shall I buy you one?"
"We won't use it that often, so I'd rather just use my ability to make it."
The black grain lump on top was caviar. I scooped a little caviar onto the properly cut chicken breast, cut a bit of the romaine lettuce, and put it all in my mouth at once.
The sauce wasn't salty, but it wasn't sweet either. The taste was right in the middle, combined with the moist chicken breast. And the salty taste of the caviar intertwined, creating an interaction.
It was delicious enough on its own, but the romaine lettuce added a crunchy texture. It felt like it had evolved from a perfect form to an absolutely perfect form.
"The steak is also delicious. It's cooked well and the sauce is good."
"How's the garnish?"
"This is also good."
It's awkward for me to snatch the two raviolis, and the steak is the main course, so it's awkward to snatch that, too. I don't mind if I'm the one giving, but I don't feel like receiving.
Let's just quietly enjoy my meal.
I cleansed my palate with champagne and cut the chicken breast and romaine lettuce again to put in my mouth. The chicken breast was so good that the portion felt a bit lacking.
For a while, only the sound of me and Sion using forks and knives could be heard. We had tacitly agreed to enjoy the delicious food.
Before long, we finished it all. The portions aren't that big to begin with, and since we're both big eaters, we eat fast.
At a barbecue restaurant, the two of us eat over 10 servings, so even if this is delicious, the portion is small.
I even soaked the remaining sauce on the plate with the lettuce and ate it thoroughly. Sion did the same. Should I have ordered more a la carte?
I wasn't hungry, but I wasn't full either. Dessert was still left, though......
"There's a dessert bar over there."
"Shall we finish up with dessert?"
"It's free, so why not?"
It wasn't a dessert that you order separately; there was a bar where you could eat various kinds of small desserts. Of course, that was free.
"I'm going to the bathroom before dessert comes."
"In the old days, you would have lied and said aliens don't go to the bathroom."
"I'm going to fix my makeup."
"Don't make me laugh. You don't even put on lotion."
Truly healthy and pretty people don't need cosmetics. I don't know about being pretty, but I pride myself on my health, and even I put on lotion when I reincarnated as a woman, but Sion, who is a woman from the start, rarely wears makeup.
She probably buys one small cosmetic item and uses it for a year. Sion is the type who barely even puts on lotion when going out in winter.
If you ask if she goes to do her business, well...... she does. Just the small stuff.
Sion's body structure is similar to a human's, but if you look closely, it's different. One of those things is the digestive system. She breaks down and digests everything she eats. It's not that there's no waste at all, but it's at a level that can be excreted through urine and sweat.
She really doesn't go to the bathroom. Halfway.
Maybe because they realized Sion went to the bathroom, the dessert hadn't come out yet. It was a point where it should have come out long ago, but seeing them realize that, it seems the staff training is good.
About 10 minutes later, Sion returned from the bathroom.
"That took a while?"
"I had a brief conversation."
".......? With whom?"
"It's nothing."
Soon, the final dessert came out.
"Strawberry Sorbet and Orange Jelly."
The dessert didn't need a long introduction. Sion's was a red Strawberry Sorbet with much coarser ice grains than the Basil Sorbet I had earlier, and mine had orange jelly on top of cream whipped like meringue.
Small, spherical jelly balls were placed separately on top of the soft jelly, and it seems this was also shaped separately.
I scooped the jelly with the cream with a spoon and put it in my mouth. Brown powder-like stuff was sprinkled on the cream, and when I put it in my mouth, it tasted like cinnamon. The flavor was intense, but the soft taste of the cream, the sweetness of the jelly, and the taste of the fruit juice that burst when I chewed the ball-shaped jelly covered that flavor.
"Hey, this is good. Want a bite?"
"Give me one bite."
I know roughly what the Strawberry Sorbet tastes like, so I won't touch it, but I think it's good to let Sion taste this.
Sion, who scooped a spoonful and put the jelly in her mouth, made a face that said it was delicious. Sion likes most fruits, but if you look for the few she likes the most, she likes citrus types.
"Excuse me."
Around the time we were finishing the dessert, someone who didn't look like a waiter walked up to our table. Even for a normal person, it would be a question, but the other party was an elderly foreign man.
Even if his Korean pronunciation felt a bit awkward, there was no problem understanding him; he bowed his head slightly.
"I am Yannick Alléno, the chef of this restaurant. If it's alright with you, may I offer you a dessert? It's on the house, of course."
"Is there usually a service like this?"
"Please consider it an apology for the rudeness of addressing Madame as Mademoiselle."
Madame means a married woman, and Mademoiselle means an unmarried woman; in English, it's the difference between Mrs. and Miss.
Maybe it's related to Sion...... did that happen when she went to the bathroom?
As she nodded, Chef Alléno personally placed a plate on our table. A round, chocolate-colored sphere sat there alone.
And he poured the contents from the kettle he brought over it. It was thick and light brown. It looks like chocolate as well.
As the chocolate sphere melted, the contents inside were revealed; ice cream that looked like pure white cream greeted us.
"Warm chocolate and coconut cream ice cream. I hope you both have a pleasant time."
With a light greeting, Chef Alléno cleared the spot.
As he disappeared from view, I asked her quietly.
"Did something happen?"
"Let's talk while we eat. Free stuff is good."
Since Sion doesn't seem to be in a bad mood, it shouldn't be anything strange.
I decided to talk while we ate.