Chapter 9.1

Chapter 9.1

You’ve been working alone a lot, lately. You broke up with Hiroshi, huh?」

「The team’s intact. Hiroshi-kun has to make all sorts of this-and-that’s. He hasn’t come out of the workshop in a while.」

「Heh, I’ll try my luck again, some day. Oh, right. Two each of the curry buns and corndogs, please. Oh, and two of the new cutlet skewers, too.」

「Okie dokie. That’s 1 Chrone and 20 Tirols.」

As she kept an adventurer of her acquaintance up to date, Haruna swiftly wrapped the freshly fried curry buns, and loaded up the leaf trey with the corndogs and cutlet skewers before handing them over, all at once.

「You stuff isn’t exactly cheap, but you sure sell a lot of them.」

「I think it’s because we’re the only ones to serve them in the city, still.」

When there was a little gap in customers, Haruna checked the amount left for the self-serving steak sauce and ketchup as she chatted with the owners of the food stands on either side of her. This kind of neighborly relationship was crucial to a smooth business venture. Besides, there was an important side effect of the occasional tip of information, a vital key to income as an adventurer.

「Speaking of, what other kinds of food do you have in your hometown?」

「If we’re talking more than fried food, there’s countless dishes… As for easy fried stuff, you’re looking at them.」

With that, she disinfected her hands with alcohol, and took out the potatoes she bought from the morning market along with a knife and cutting board. She chopped the potatoes down to handy sticks, and gave them a quick fry before sprinkling on salt. Haruna gave a serving to the owners on the either side.

「…Hey, this is good.」

「Makes me want to sip on something.」

「Here’s something else you can enjoy with a drink.」

She disinfected her hands again as they continued to chat, and took out the thigh cuts of a Troll Bird, which Makoto had hunted during a job while the bathroom was being renovated. After cubing the meat, she rubbed the spice (primarily soy sauce) to give it some preliminary flavor. One could see the detail in Haruna’s work by watching her disinfect a plastic-like bag before using it to rub in the seasonings. Then she dusted them in flour. After adjusting the temperature of the frying oil, she fried them twice to a golden crisp, and had her neighbors taste them.

A Troll Bird, by the way (as its name might indicate) is a large bird at over 3 meters. It’s vitality and regeneration abilities are worthy of the “troll” in its etymology. Not to mention that it glides through the air with incredible agility. An average adventurer would barely be able to defend themselves. It has wings and legs powerful enough to fly away with a horse, and its thigh and breast meat, consequently, give off a comfortable softness and texture once cooked. In fact, Troll Bird meat is out on the market as a relatively extravagant food.

「Mm. Now I really want a drink.」

「If it’s not a course meal or anything, this could be your entrée, too.」

Despite fried chicken being one of the easiest fried food, the food stand owners still chowed it down with curiosity. This was a good representation of the simple lack of fried food in Farlane.

「Those aren’t on the menu?」

A soldier, on his way home after his guard shift, had spotted Haruna tinkering with the meat behind the counter. He was practically drooling.

「Unfortunately, I don’t have enough to sell them on the stand. Two Troll Birds won’t last half a day, don’t you think?」

「I guess you’re right. What a shame.」

「Well, there’s still some left. If you buy the curry bun and cutlet skewer set, I’ll throw some in there?」

「You got yourself a deal.」

And so, the soldier was hyped into making the rather expensive purchase of two curry buns and a cutlet skewer. He gladly gave up 90 Tirols (enough for three frugal meals) and chowed down the fried bird with glee.

「Right. Have you seen any more fried food, lately?」

Haruna asked.

「No other food stand is selling them, that’s for sure.」

「The wok has been pretty popular, but the stove is the real issue.」

「I tried it at our stand, but my stove couldn’t get the oil hot enough.」

In addition to the food stand owners on either side of Haruna, a craftsman from the neighborhood (who had just bought ten corndogs), and a woman who came to buy cutlet skewers to add to her medley of vegetables, agreed with this assessment. In reality, a household magic-powered stove would have a hard time adjusting the heat to what’s suited for frying food, and burns a lot of energy in the process. An industrial stove, on the other hand, were a little too big for the woks in the market. Of course, preparing something just for this purpose would cost a little too much to make it an easy decision. Moreover, most people lacked the proper knowledge, which led to only a few brave stores trying their hands (through much trial and error) at frying food for the first time. (There were a few restaurants that already handled fried food, most of them extremely high-class). As for the food stand industry, it was unclaimed territory. One could expect the same for the development of steaming food in Farlane. Of course, no one here was even yet aware of the concept of steaming food, yet.

In Farlane, where measurements for cooking were more of an art than science, most reputable restaurants tend to keep their culinary knowledge behind their kitchen doors. As a result, revolutionary dishes or cooking methods took longer to become popularized. The secrecy only reinforced the gap in quality between expensive restaurants and the rest of the bunch, preventing the bottom line of Farlane’s culinary culture from improving. This might be the critical cause to the slow emergence of fried food stands, despite oil being readily available.

Of course, even Haruna, who wanted the cooking method to be widespread, barely shared any information about which oil to use for which dish, or how big each piece should be and how hot the oil should be and how long they should fry each dish, out of pure laziness. In actuality, she had no right to whine that there weren’t enough fried food stands in the city.

「I don’t see any dishes using curry powder, either. I told a few people how to make it…」

「The ingredients are cheap, but it just takes so freaking long to make. They’d have to sell it for an astronomical price.」

「Really?」

「That’s what my potion maker said. Oh, right. Twenty curry buns and two sets of the platter, please.」

「Coming right up!」

The assistant of a shop nearby had dropped that insight along with a big order. The platter is comprised of two each of every cutlet skewer on the menu, along with a pair of corndogs. Its price varied by day. This day, there were eight pairs, including the corndogs. Some cutlet skewers went up to 20 Tirols a pop, so this day’s platter came out to 2 Chrones and change.

Of course, the platter won’t fit on a tray, so they were drained of the last drops of oil and wrapped. Ketchup and steak sauce were self-served, so none were included here. Of course, there was proper seasoning on all pieces, and could be enjoyed without condiments.

「Here you go. Special occasion?」

「We got a big business deal. We haven’t exactly started on the project, but we’re doing a little pre-celebration with the popular stuff around town.」

「Awesome. I’ll give you a little discount them. It’ll be exactly 11 Chrones.」

「Thank you.」

「I can get you ketchup and steak sauce in a little bottle for 50 Tirols each, do you want them?」

「That would be great.」

「Okie dokie.」

She handed them a small bottle of ketchup and steak sauce. At first, they weren’t selling anything like these, but more and more customers had requested them. They had now become standard add-ons upon request. While the price may seem steep, it barely covered the cost to make the bottles. Truth be told, since Haruna and Hiroshi had no intention of creating a monopoly, they were almost hoping for someone who had tasted their food to copy it and spread the recipe around the city. Maybe then, there could be a new dish for them to taste.

The assistant bought this and that from the stands at either side of Haruna’s, and went back to the shop. After watching him leave, Haruna opened the storage box to prepare for more orders to find…

「Eesh, we’re running low!」

It wasn’t even halfway through the day, but she was running low on her stock of curry buns. Come to think of it, she remembered frying curry buns by the dozens constantly (as she chatted with customers) before making the French fries and fried chicken just now.

「I wonder why we’re so busy, today?」

「Maybe because your hours are unpredictable, lately. You weren’t here yesterday, either, right?」

「Wouldn’t that drive customers away?」

「No one else sells your stuff.」

「You’ve got a good thing going.」

Even so, Haruna’s neighbors were still laughing. They had been selling drinks that pair well with curry buns, and some palette cleansers fit for a desert after chowing down some fried food. They were selling some product of their own, riding the bandwagon. In fact, if Haruna’s sales started dropping, theirs could go down with it.

「Just a few days ago, our record was, like, 200 curry buns and corndogs each, and maybe 80 cutlet skewers… After a whole day.」

「I guess the word’s spreading.」

「Uh-oh. I should have prepped more.」

「How many you got left, by the way?」

「30 curry buns and corndogs. For the skewers, there are 10 bison, 25 spider legs, and 40 each of the rest.」

Which meant that she couldn’t sell too many more platters, today. Because of the quest they had accepted (or rather, had no choice but to accept) the day before, she was really hoping to keep the leftovers to a minimum, and Haruna was beginning to worry if she had been too stingy. Even as she pondered this, ten more customers had come and gone, taking three curry buns and a total of twenty or so cutlet skewers.

How’s it goin’?

In the midst of Haruna’s realization, Hiroshi called her.

We’re almost out of stock. We won’t last another hour.

Alright. You want me to whip some up and send ‘em to ya?

Send them? How? If you’re going to have someone bring them, I don’t think that’ll be fast enough.

I just expanded the sharin’ function to the storage box.