Chapter 1: Preparations for the Revival Festival

1

After the festival of the hunt at the Ruu settlement, there was a day off, and then the sixteenth of the violet month arrived. Starting today, the Fa clan would begin running an outdoor restaurant of its own.

It had already been around twenty days since the Ruu clan opened their outdoor restaurant. And with just six days left till the sun god's revival festival, our preparations were complete as well.

Prior to this, the outdoor restaurant had been using four stall spaces with seven tables and forty-two chairs. The plan was for the Fa clan to make an investment to provide the same amount of seating. In other words, from here on out, our two clans would be running an outdoor restaurant that was twice as large together.

"All right, now we've just gotta wait for the food to heat up."

We had set up everything for the new expanded seating yesterday on our day off. We had simply needed to clean off the tables and chairs this morning, and then were able to start our final prep work at the stalls themselves.

I had also increased the number of my stalls from two to three, starting today. Since we had invested in the outdoor restaurant, I was now able to serve dishes that required customers to have a seat and utensils. I had decided to alternate between the old giba manju and poitan wraps at one stall, and unveil new dishes at the other two stalls.

For one of them, I went with both curry and pasta. I had incorporated some of what I had learned from Naudis into the curry. And as for the pasta, I hoped it would draw attention because it was so novel.

Still, even if the curry and pasta were dishes I felt proud of, I couldn't really call them proper "giba cooking." Put simply, it would be completely possible to make delicious versions of the dishes with kimyuus or karon meat. That meant they neglected the crucial point of helping to spread the delicious taste of giba meat. Because of that, I decided to sell them alternating day by day at the same stall, alongside a separate meat dish as a daily special.

For our opening day, that meant selling giba curry, giba manju, and the special dish, giba steak. It would soon be half a year since I had started doing business in the post town, and I had finally made up my mind to try selling the meat in the style that would allow the customer to most directly enjoy its taste.

The flavor of giba steak was pretty quirky, compared to kimyuus or karon, so I had no clue how well it would be accepted by the townsfolk. But by treating it as one of the specials, I could test that out. And if it drew enough interest, I intended to also give whole roast giba a try in the post town.

With all that expansion going on, it seemed like it would be difficult to keep doing the lottery for the giba cutlet sandwiches, so for the moment the plan was to give that gimmick a rest and instead add the dish to the list of specials.

"With you guys expanding your stalls so much, it's really starting to feel like a festival is coming. I'm gonna enjoy seeing everything you've got for us to eat now," a customer from Jagar who was standing in line remarked.

"You can give the new dishes a taste test, so please do try them all. The giba curry over there uses lots of herbs from Sym, but it's actually a dish from my home country."

"Hmm? I'm not exactly fond of Sym, but I guess if I can try a sample first, I'll at least give it a shot."

When unveiling my new menu, I was the most concerned about my customers from Jagar.

Folks from Sym tended not to be too concerned about quirky meat due to eating gyama raised in the mountains, which had a strong scent to them, and they generally didn't have any issues with ingredients from Jagar either. Meanwhile, southerners were often really direct by nature and held a strong antipathy toward Sym, not to mention a lot of them were a bit pickier than even westerners when it came to the taste of meat. With that in mind, I added a highly aromatic tau oil and myamuu sauce to the giba steak.

For garnishes, I prepared a sauté of aria, nenon, and the pseudo-brown beech mushroom. I kept the meat at just around 120 grams and sold it for two red coins. I chose that size and price because I wanted to allow people to enjoy all sorts of combinations of cooking from the stalls.

With the other new dish-the giba curry-I chose to go with the same system the Ruu clan did with their soups. In other words, one ladleful was one and a half red coins, and two ladles would be three.

Just like the Ruu clan did, though, I referred to the half size as a whole portion. Tsuvai had advised us that if an overwhelming majority of the customers ordered the smaller size, we should treat that as the baseline. As such, one ladleful became a full serving, and if that wasn't enough, people could order a double serving.

Furthermore, the soup, curry, and specials came with a half-sized baked poitan. Half a poitan wasn't very much food, so I still expected folks would order another dish alongside them.

The Ruu clan also had a change on their end too. Which is to say, they reevaluated the size and cost of the giba burgers and myamuu giba that they alternated between. Up until now, both had used quite a bit of meat, around 180 grams, and sold for three red coins. That price-quantity ratio was determined by the castle of Genos, and so there was no changing it. But it would be difficult to enjoy alongside other dishes like that, so they went ahead and lowered both the price and volume.

The giba burgers and giba manju both had 120 grams of meat for two red coins, while the myamuu giba and poitan wraps were 90 grams of meat for one and a half coins.

I was worried that making the giba burgers smaller would change how substantial they felt but ultimately decided that size wouldn't be an issue after all. Besides, using 180 grams of meat was rather non-standard to begin with.

It was a pretty distant memory at this point, but the patties at a certain famous burger restaurant from my old world weighed in at just 30-40 grams. At some point, they started selling a burger that had more volume to it, with a patty that weighed a quarter of a pound. When I did the math out of curiosity, it worked out to about 113 grams. In other words, even after needing to downsize them, the giba burgers were still bigger than a quarter pound of meat.

Another important point was that we decided to stagger the alternation for some of the dishes. That was because if everything was swapping daily, there wouldn't be as much depth to the variety of combinations on offer.

The Fa clan's specials and the Ruu's soup dishes were set to rotate daily. The Fa clan would switch between the giba curry and the pasta every two days, while the Ruu would do the same for their giba burgers and myamuu giba every three days. Our giba manju and poitan wraps would change out every four days. It was about half a month between now and the end of the revival festival, so customers with a long stay would be able to enjoy all sorts of combinations.

As for the number of meals, we didn't know which dishes would prove most popular, so for today we prepared a lot of everything. We'd play it by ear and make adjustments from here on based on the sales.

For today, we had three hundred servings of giba hot pot stew, two hundred of giba curry, one hundred and forty of the myamuu giba, one hundred and twenty giba manju, and one hundred giba steaks.

If we sold all of that, it would work out to 1,400 red coins. So far, our sales had maxed out at around 1,150 coins, and today would be a test to see just how much we could expand.

If we end up with a lot of leftovers, the Kimyuus's Tail should purchase them off of us...but I wouldn't want to trouble Milano Mas like that if I can help it.

Of course, expanding the stalls and restaurant also meant bringing more people onboard to help. Up until now, our full-time team had consisted of me, Toor Deen, and Yamiru Lea, while Yun Sudra came around the time the sun hit its peak. But from here on out, we would all be working for the entire business day, and we were bringing in two more chefs. They came from the Gaaz and Ratsu clans, who had previously expressed their support for the Fa clan's actions and had women to spare.

As for the Ruu clan, Reina and Sheera Ruu alternated daily, and Vina, Lala, and Rimee Ruu had a three-day rotation, with only Tsuvai working every day. That was all kept the same, while Ama Min Rutim switched from only arriving when the sun hit its peak to being full-time, and they also took in newcomers from their subordinate clans, the Lea and Min. The idea was to bring on new help before the busy period arrived, just as we had done.

That was the plan for the sun god's revival festival that the members of the Ruu clan and I had put together.

"Hey there, Asuta. Did I get here a bit too soon?" a voice called out from off to my side while I was heating up a metal tray in the stall. It was Dora and Tara, who we had just passed by on the way here.

"Wow, you showed up early. We'll need just a bit more time before opening."

They usually didn't show up until the morning rush had died down, at the earliest. Placing a hand atop his beloved daughter's head, Dora shot me a strained smile.

"Well, I asked the pot seller's son to watch the shop so I could hurry...