The Early Bird newspaper was delivered early in the morning.
Jingle—
“Manager! The paper’s here!”
Aris picked up the newspaper from in front of the door and ran into the dining hall.
I answered as I washed my hands in the kitchen.
“Put it on the table.”
“Okaaay~”
Aris plopped the newspaper down on the table.
I dried my hands, came out, pulled out a chair, sat down, and unfolded the paper.
It had been three days since Mosul visited.
A newly created column, “Today’s Gourmet.”
My restaurant had been featured as its first entry.
---
[Today’s Gourmet - Issue No. 1]
The first restaurant we would like to introduce is “Gourmet Restaurant Slow.”
Uniquely, it does not accept ordinary walk-in guests and is said to operate by reservation only.
There is no menu, and the arrangement is inconvenient, requiring a return visit after making a reservation.
The restaurant’s location is marked on the map below.
The road is extremely rough and far from the city,
so you will need to prepare a sturdy horse if you wish to visit.
Next are Mr. Mosul’s comments.
-There is no set menu, and guests may order anything they desire without restriction.
-It is a restaurant that seems to sound a warning to a food service industry steeped in commercialism,
and Klaus, the owner and chef of the restaurant, appears to run it purely as a hobby.
-Like a hidden treasure chest in the mountains,
this restaurant offers a guaranteed gourmet experience precisely because it is so difficult to find the key and open it.
-The chef has his own philosophy and convictions regarding food,
and if you truly wish to try something special, it is worth visiting at least once.
-As there are no restrictions on what may be ordered,
guests must be prepared to bear the high price.
.
.
.
---
“How did he write it?”
Aris tried to peer into the newspaper from beside me.
“Well, it’s not bad.”
Mosul had done as I asked.
I had asked him to write it so that customers wouldn’t flood in.
It wasn’t as though he had written a bad review, and he had mentioned plenty of good points,
but I didn’t think an ordinary person would read that introduction and come looking for my restaurant.
But the Early Bird newspaper was distributed across the entire continent.
On top of that, it remained true that my restaurant had passed the standards of the infamous gourmet Mosul
and had been the first to be introduced in the column.
No matter how it had been introduced,
I had a feeling there might be no stopping customers from gathering from all over.
“Aris.”
“Yes?”
“I’m closing the shop for a while.”
Aris’s eyes went round.
“What?! Why?!”
“You saw the newspaper.”
“Didn’t he just introduce it well, exactly as it is?”
“That’s the problem.”
Aris’s expression stiffened in a strangely subtle way.
“Uh…… why?”
“There won’t be many people who’d come all the way here after reading an introduction like this. But this is a newspaper distributed across the entire continent. Even if only one or two people from each city come out of curiosity, we’ll have more customers for a while.”
Gourmet Restaurant Slow could not handle several customers at once.
It was, in effect, a restaurant I ran as a hobby,
and with the current method of operation, I wouldn’t be able to respond if customers increased.
If no customers came at all, that would be a problem too,
but if customers came rushing in every day, that would be an even bigger problem.
One or two customers a week was enough.
But no matter how I thought about it, being featured in the newspaper this time
seemed likely to draw in far too many customers.
So I decided.
I would close the restaurant for a while.
At least until the newspaper’s publicity effect died down.
If so, it would be better to do something during that time.
Mosul’s order had been a mischievous one, tinged with malice.
But in the end, it had become a good experience for me.
Belkas liver was an ingredient I had never even thought to eat in the first place,
but once I removed the poison and tried it, it turned out to be a delicacy beyond my expectations.
Was that what had prompted it?
This time, I found myself wanting to seek out and eat something I wanted to try.
Not something I usually made at the restaurant,
but something a little special and unfamiliar, like Belkas liver.
A place came to mind.
Waterhorn.
A harbor village where an old acquaintance of mine lived.
It was also through that place that I had obtained the Belkas liver.
The acquaintance who helped me last time was a fisherman named Boris.
Though he was called a fisherman, in truth, he had enough skill to join a guild immediately and distinguish himself as a warrior.
Back when I was an adventurer, we had once gone together to subjugate a kraken in the distant sea,
and Boris had thrown an iron harpoon of tremendous weight with his bare hands and struck the kraken’s head in a single shot.
Waterhorn was a large harbor where deep-sea fishing boats came and went.
Unlike other harbor villages that made a living by catching fish only in nearby waters,
Waterhorn was a place where people boarded large ships and sailed out into the open ocean to catch many rare fish.
From monsters to deep-sea fish, such a wide variety of fish were caught there
that even I, with my extensive knowledge of fish, did not know many of them.
It would be nice to go there, meet Boris for the first time in a while and catch up,
and look for some special ingredients or dishes that could inspire me.
The timing was perfect.
“Aris.”
I spoke as I packed my things.
“I’m going to Waterhorn for a few days.”
Aris froze for a moment, then opened her mouth.
“……What about me?”
“Watch the shop.”
“By myself?”
“Yeah.”
“…….”
Aris’s face quickly turned tearful.
“Um… what about food! What about the food I’ll eat! And what if customers come!”
“There’s a closed sign in front of the door. Just turn it over. I’ll make enough food for you to eat for a few days before I go, so heat it up yourself.”
“But……!”
Leaving Aris behind as her eyes darted around in panic,
I made a huge pot full of stew for her to eat, then left the shop.
* * *
Waterhorn was half a day away by carriage.
As the carriage entered the outskirts of the harbor village, a powerful smell drifted in.
Salty wind and the fishy smell of seafood,
and the scent of something being roasted over fire.
It was the distinctive smell of a harbor village.
I got off the carriage and looked around.
The streets were bustling.
Fishermen and sailors came and went,
and merchants shouted.
By the docks, several large fishing boats were unloading cargo.
I slowly walked toward the harbor.
The fish market where fish auctions took place was located right beside the docks.
As I entered the large, old building, the fishy smell grew thicker.
Fish were lined up on wooden display boards.
I walked slowly between the stalls.
There were plenty of fish I had never seen even in the royal capital’s market.
A large, flat fish gleaming leaden gray.
Fish like anchovies filling an entire basket.
A large red creature whose shell looked as hard as armor……
I examined them one by one,
imagining in my head what kind of dishes they would suit.
“Huh? Aren’t you Klaus?”
I had been browsing the market for a while
when a booming voice sounded from behind me.
That rough, loud voice……
It was a familiar voice I hadn’t heard in a long time.
“Boris?”
Boris.
A fisherman I had come to know in Waterhorn during my adventurer days.
He was a full head taller than me,
and his exposed forearms were almost thicker than my thighs, their muscles clearly defined.
His rough work clothes were steeped in salt,
his face was darkly tanned, and his hair was long and curly.
If not for the easy smile on his face,
he would have looked like a veteran warrior or mercenary.
“What brings you to this town? Here for ingredients?”
“Well… this and that.”
Boris strode over to my side and glanced down at the fish I had been looking at.
“Is there any fish you need? If you came, you should’ve told me first. You have no idea how dumbfounded I was when you asked me to get a Belkas last time.”
“Thanks to you, I was able to entertain my guest properly. I came partly to buy you a drink for that.”
Boris’s eyes widened.
“What? You used that to entertain a guest……? Hey, are you going around killing people or something?”
“As if. Of course I removed the poison. Once the poison’s gone, it’s quite tasty.”
“You removed Belkas poison? Wow… even if someone told me the poison was gone, I still couldn’t eat it. Too scary.”
Boris spoke with the smile of an innocent country youth.
“Anyway, if you came to look at fish, you came at the right time. Today’s the day the boats come in. There’s been a lot of good stuff coming up lately.”
I looked back at the stalls.
“What’s that?”
I pointed at the flat, lead-colored fish.
“Ah, that’s a Plumbian. It comes up from very deep down. It’s got a lot of flesh and plenty of fat. Pretty good grilled.”
“What about that?”
“The transparent little ones are Needle Glass. They’ve got a taste that gives the tip of your tongue a little sting. The red one beside them is Carminatus. Its shell is so hard that cleaning it is no ordinary task. It can ruin a blade.”
As expected, Boris’s knowledge of fish was far more extensive than mine.
As I listened to Boris’s explanations,
I stored the names of the fish in my head.
A short while later, Boris exchanged a few familiar words with the merchants,
then bought one Plumbian and picked it up.
“How about tonight? Let’s have a drink with this at our usual tavern.”
“Sounds good. I’ll buy the drinks.”
“Let’s go.”
Boris turned his enormous body and began leading the way.
* * *
The tavern was close to the docks.
It was an old wooden building with a low ceiling,
and inside, it was crowded with fishermen and sailors.
The tables were glossy from absorbed grease,
and the smell of side dishes mingled with the smell of alcohol.
As soon as Boris found a seat, he exchanged greetings with familiar faces.
They were all broad-built and loud-voiced.
I sat quietly beside him.
The drinks came out.
It was ale beer, an extremely dark brown in color.
“So, what really brings you here? What about your restaurant?”
Boris asked as he tilted his mug.
“Nothing much. The restaurant got a bit needlessly famous.”
“What’s wrong with being famous? Isn’t that good?”
“If too many customers come, I’ll get busy and it’ll be annoying. I won’t be able to focus on cooking.”
“Won’t you be in the red if you don’t have customers?”
“I run it while taking a loss. It’s a hobby.”
“Wow… that’s one fancy hobby you’ve got there.”
I did not answer.
Boris laughed heartily again.
The food came out.
A piece of grilled Plumbian,
pickled vegetables, and one pot with a shallow amount of broth.
I looked at the pot.
“What’s that?”
Boris pushed the pot toward me.
“It’s just soup. We roughly call it mixed fish soup. Sailors’ food, you could say. After the boats come in, we gather up the ones that are awkward to sell, throw in whatever ingredients we have, and boil it all together. There’s no fixed recipe. It tastes different every time.”
I scooped up the broth with a ladle.
It was a deep color.
The cloudy hue characteristic of a broth made from various kinds of fish mixed together.
I took a sip.
It was salty and fishy.
But that fishiness was not unpleasant.
Someone with a weak stomach might not be able to eat it,
but I could detect the deep savoriness lying beneath that fishy, earthy taste.
I looked into the pot.
Assorted chunks of fish were collapsing in the broth.
Some had been put in with the bones,
and others still had their innards intact.
It was certainly not a neat dish one could serve to ordinary customers.
A complex broth flavor that could not be drawn from a single fish.
A taste close to the wild,
born from the mingling of oils and stock from various fish.
“How is it? Edible?”
Boris asked.
“It’s rough.”
“Well, yeah. It’s something sailors make for themselves.”
I took another spoonful of the mixed fish soup.
For some reason, it had a strangely addictive taste.
* * *