The Legendary Army Cook
Before launching any business, market research is the obvious first step.
I sent people into the restaurant districts of Portu Commercial City and the Elrond Barony to assess the situation.
Before long, I had a clear picture of the problems plaguing the food service industry.
Karl Hansen gave me the briefing.
"First of all, almost no one has received professional culinary training."
"Most people simply open restaurants using whatever slapdash recipes they learned at home."
"Is that so?"
"Yes. As a result, the flavor combinations are often bizarre."
"The fact that spices are now easy to obtain has actually become a curse."
"People who have never handled spices before simply throw every 'good' one they can find into the pot."
"......."
"I tasted it myself. I know exactly how disastrous it is."
"On top of that, these are people who grew up in crushing poverty."
"They have almost no experience with eating meat."
"Don’t they eat chicken or pork? It’s hard to believe they’ve never tasted meat at all."
"Of course they have. But the lords usually confiscate most of it."
"......."
"On rare occasions, when they are truly lucky, they might get chicken or pork."
"Even then, they cook it to stretch the quantity rather than improve the taste."
"The result is still appalling."
"Still, no one complains."
"Their only goal was not to starve."
"The fact that restaurants can even stay open with food this bad shows just how low customer expectations have fallen."
I let out a long sigh.
"In short, the entire restaurant scene is made up of people who have never learned proper cooking, don’t know how to handle spices or meat, and simply opened shops one after another."
"Yes. A restaurant district whose core product—food—is utterly tasteless."
"The one saving grace is that the officials from Adran’s faction do their jobs well."
"Hygiene standards are actually decent because any violation results in immediate closure."
"Everything else, however, is a disaster."
"The food tastes terrible, the recipes are strange, operations are chaotic, and the ingredients and spices are mishandled."
"Worst of all are the menus."
"Menus?"
"They’re limited to the same survival-style dishes commoners have always made at home—meals designed only to increase volume."
"Thin meat porridge that barely contains any meat, bread that is hastily ground and turns out rock-hard and unpleasant."
"When they try to improve the taste by dumping in spices, the result only becomes more appalling."
"We have a long way to go."
I sighed again.
"What if we brought in famous chefs from the capital and had them teach the restaurant owners?"
"The high-end dishes those chefs prepare are far too complex for commoners to learn."
"They also require large, well-organized kitchen staffs that simply don’t exist in ordinary restaurants."
"I suppose that’s true."
"Moreover, capital chefs have no experience cooking commoner food."
"They don’t understand what ordinary people want or need."
"Bringing them here won’t raise the overall standard of the industry."
I scratched the back of my head.
"With the Golden Plains being cleared and vast numbers of livestock arriving from the western continent, meat consumption is about to explode."
"We can’t let the largest population in the area keep eating food at this miserable level."
"People who work hard deserve proper meals."
"Then what…… what do we do?"
"We need someone who understands what commoners actually want to eat, who knows how to handle spices and meat at a capital-chef level, who can develop simple yet delicious recipes that commoners can easily learn, and who has experience running a restaurant."
"It’s not like we’re in a novel…… There’s no way someone like that just happens to exist……"
Surprisingly, the answer to our question came from Karia, who often lounged on the sofa in my office after her daily duties.
"There is one such person in the Iron Blood Coalition."
Karl and I both snapped our heads up.
"Princess Karia, you’re saying there really is someone?"
"Yes, Landor. He comes from a famous chef family in the capital."
"After his family fell, he volunteered for the Coalition and became a mess hall cook."
"When he saw how terrible the preserved rations tasted, he started experimenting to make them better."
"He’s also very skilled with spices."
"Really?"
"Yes. During the northern expedition, spices were extremely precious."
"Whenever the imperial family rewarded us with spices, they would call that cook to prepare the meal."
"I still remember how incredible it tasted."
"The officers lined up just to try a single bite."
"......."
"Because he came from a chef family, he also has years of experience running restaurants."
His qualifications seemed more than sufficient.
Still, a cook proves himself through his cooking, not his résumé.
"Could I try the food he makes?"
I asked to taste the rations he normally prepared.
Karia nodded without hesitation.
The next day, I visited the Manin Unit.
"Welcome to the Manin Unit, Lord Landor. Haha."
The Ailam Empire’s military was divided into two main forces.
Each territory’s lord commanded its own territorial army.
The emperor directly controlled the imperial army.
The Iron Blood Coalition belonged to the imperial army and was considered the largest and most powerful force in imperial history.
When monsters rose in the north, the emperor conscripted the elite soldiers from every territorial army and formed the two-hundred-thousand-strong Iron Blood Coalition.
Because the troops came from different territories, their equipment and training levels varied wildly.
They could hardly be called an elite force at first.
Yet in just two years of the northern campaign, Karia transformed them into the strongest army the empire had ever seen.
She reorganized them into ten-man, hundred-man, thousand-man, and ten-thousand-man units, personally selecting every officer.
Through countless battles, those officers and soldiers became fiercely loyal to her—willing to charge into fire at her command.
In the original novel, that loyalty had been used to massacre imperial citizens.
Now the Coalition made up more than half of the entire imperial army and symbolized the empire’s military might.
Its current position, however, was rather peculiar.
While the soldiers still received their salaries from the imperial treasury, their actual duties were to protect my personal territory—essentially functioning as a territorial army.
Their main tasks were maintaining public order in the Elrond Barony and Portu Commercial City, and, should the Sultan invade, working with the Wyvern Knights to block enemy forces from using the trade routes.
"Sorry for the sudden visit, Commander of the Manin Unit."
"Haha. Think nothing of it. You are always welcome here, Lord Landor."
Because of this arrangement, the soldiers treated me almost like their lord.
Although their wages came from the empire, I provided their housing, living conditions, and hazard pay.
As was customary when a high-ranking visitor arrived, the soldiers stood at rigid attention in perfect formation.
The buildings inside the Manin Unit grounds gleamed; someone had clearly cleaned them thoroughly.
"I heard you came to meet the cook…… Sebastian?"
"Yes, that’s correct, Commander."
"It’s mealtime, so he has already prepared the food."
"It may not match the refined dishes of the capital, but it’s quite famous within the Coalition for being delicious. Haha!"
The commander led me to the dining hall.
I insisted on eating with the regular soldiers rather than receiving special treatment.
In the end, I stood in line among the troops.
"L-Lord Landor."
"Please don’t mind me. Enjoy your meal. Haha."
I received the legendary mess-hall stew Sebastian had prepared, served in the same steel mess tin as everyone else, and began to eat.
Today’s dish was meat porridge.
I sniffed it first.
"The smell passes. The appearance passes. For army rations…… it’s actually pretty good."
The other soldiers’ reactions were even more encouraging.
They devoured the food with obvious delight.
I took a bite myself.
"It’s delicious."
It was genuinely excellent.
The spices were perfectly balanced, used in just the right amounts to create an outstanding flavor.
The combination of meat and other ingredients left a happy impression on the palate.
The base ingredients were nothing more than standard military preserved rations, yet he had understood their characteristics and created a dish that maximized their synergy.
"This is the man!!!"
The moment I tasted it, I knew.
After the meal, I had the Manin Unit commander and Karia summon the cook named Sebastian.
"Y-You called for me?"
Sebastian looked extremely nervous.
The Manin Unit commander alone was intimidating enough for an ordinary soldier.
Now both the Coalition’s supreme commander, Karia, and the lord of the entire territory, me, had appeared.
He seemed completely overwhelmed.
I approached him, patted his shoulder, and smiled to ease the tension.
"Nice to meet you, Sebastian. I tried the food you made today. It was really delicious."
"I-Is that so? Thank you."
"I’d like to discuss something regarding cooking. Would that be all right?"
Sebastian sat down with an expression that said he couldn’t imagine what a lord would want to discuss about cooking.
"I’m thinking of starting a small restaurant business."
"Have you ever tried the food in Portu Commercial City or the Elrond Barony?"
Sebastian’s face darkened instantly.
I understood that look perfectly.
Even I, who was not particularly picky, had wanted to curse after tasting it.
For a sensitive chef like Sebastian, the experience must have been far worse.
"That isn’t cooking. It’s closer to livestock feed meant only to keep people alive."
I burst into laughter and nodded.
"A very chef-like, cold assessment! And a perfectly accurate description."
"Yes. It doesn’t even deserve to be called food."
"I want to raise the standard of the food industry in Portu Commercial City and the Elrond Barony."
"I want restaurants run by chefs who truly understand spices and proper cooking techniques."
Sebastian’s tense expression shifted.
"That…… that’s a truly wonderful ambition."
"I would love to see that happen as well."
"Honestly, as a chef, I can hardly bear to look at the current state of the restaurants."
"Right? Right?? So, I’d like to hire you."
"I have quite a few ideas about cooking."
"If you could turn those ideas into realistic, practical menus, that would be perfect."
"I’d be happy to. Why wouldn’t I?"
"Thank you. Let’s revive the food industry together!!!"
I shook Sebastian’s hand vigorously and looked at Karia.
She smiled and nodded.
"Soldier Sebastian, you have served the Coalition well."
"I hereby recognize your official discharge."
"Thank you, Coalition Commander!"
Sebastian gave an awkward smile.
It was the face of a man overjoyed that he would never again have to cook for hundreds of people at once.
Thus he was discharged and came to work under me.
I gave him an entire empty building in Portu Commercial City and gathered every kind of spice, meat, grain, and vegetable I could find.
Fortunately, this world had magically powered refrigerators, making the task possible.
"Develop dishes that commoners can eat simply and quickly."
"Meals that can be prepared fast, taste good, and still be sold at low prices."
"I’ll give you several ideas."
Delicious food.
More precisely, food I liked.
Fried chicken, hamburgers, pizza, pasta, ramen, curry, and so on.
Having tasted every cuisine from every civilization in my previous world, I had no shortage of ideas.
"H-How did you even come up with these dishes……?"
"I ate plenty of high-end food in the capital."
"I simply remembered what I thought of back then."
"Among these, pick the ones that can be implemented right away and are easy to teach."
"Got it?"
"These aren’t proper capital banquets…… nor are they the usual volume-stretching commoner dishes."
"What exactly should I call this style?"
The name had already been decided.
"Food that can be mass-produced cheaply and served quickly and lightly to commoners."
"I’ve named it fast food."
"We’ll open chain restaurants throughout the district and operate them this way."
I would capture the stomachs of this world’s people with modern cuisine.
After all, wasn’t that the universal rule of isekai food?