LIGHTNOVELONLINE The top chefs of this era prepare dishes that taste terrible.
People who reach the pinnacle in any field possess abilities that ordinary folks can’t even comprehend, so it doesn’t make sense that their carefully crafted food tastes bad.
The food they make at banquets or balls isn’t designed for people to enjoy eating in the first place.
To flaunt their wealth, they douse wine with pepper and slather coloring spices as if painting a canvas. That’s what they call high-class cuisine.
Chefs in noble families can only create tasteless food focused solely on ‘showing off’.
“My cakes were popular because they were beautiful and delicious, you know?”
Even if they dump in tons of sugar, it’s hardly off-putting compared to pepper or other stimulating spices.
“Chloe, do you think the food that nobles or rich people eat is tasty?”
At that, Chloe shook her head.
“To be honest, the dishes served at banquets taste horrible. They overdo it with spices like pepper and nutmeg. Honestly, it would be better if they didn’t add any at all.”
When ordinary people do get a chance to feast on high-quality food, they prepare by starving themselves since the night before.
It’s a rare opportunity to indulge in expensive dishes, and this goes for the nobles as well.
Nobles typically eat relatively cheaper meals in their everyday lives compared to what they have at banquets, where they eat gilded dishes.
“But here, it’s the opposite.”
During the lengthy banquets, people try to eat less of the heavily spiced dishes by stuffing themselves at home beforehand.
“Chris said that nobles serve such dishes at places like balls to display their family’s power. But honestly, I find it hard to understand why we should make precious food taste so bad.”
Now, Chloe is living a life of luxury right alongside me.
However, just three years ago, she was in a position to be sold as a slave in a poor rural area.
Slathering pork and beef with spices until they become inedible doesn’t exactly look good.
I also think it’s an outrageous waste of food.
“Chris, what would happen if the food nobles eat became accessible for the middle class or merchants to enjoy at least occasionally? Would they still feel the need to douse it in spices just to flaunt their wealth?”
“Nobles aren’t fools. They wouldn’t feel the need to go splurging on spices worth their weight in gold to make a dish. The food served at this banquet is meant to flaunt ‘wealth that can’t be compared to the lowly’.”
To interpret Chris’s words a bit deeper, if the ‘middle class’, which they consider lowly, could have at least one similar dish a year, they wouldn’t even feel the need to eat those heavily spiced dishes.
They’d taste bad anyway, and the prestige that comes with flaunting wealth would diminish sharply.
“Still, it was burdensome to make these dishes even when my father was alive. How on earth do you intend to lower the price?”
Chris’s Modica clan is a high-ranking firm.
Including the nobles, they belonged to the top 3% of wealth in society.
However, making it accessible for the relatively cash-strapped in our empire who are in the top 10% to 25% is practically impossible.
If you think about it based on prior common sense, that is.
“Everything becomes cheaper when you make it in bulk. So why not reduce the variety and scale of the course meals, allowing multiple groups to dine together? And as for your family, Chris, while money isn’t the problem for artisans and merchants, the reason they can’t afford noble food is due to labor costs.”
Just because you’re the head chef of a duke’s household doesn’t mean you’re pocketing 4-5 gold coins a month.
That’s because being a chef in this era is essentially like being a civil servant, akin to a level 9 culinary civil servant.
They just have slightly better social standing than other artisans.
“The average salary was about 3-4 silver coins a month, right?”
Our empire doesn’t have any proper recipe books, and the concept of hiring a chef daily doesn’t exist, meaning you must employ them at least yearly.
Unless you’re extraordinarily wealthy, delivering ‘high-end’ dishes, which require lots of labor, at the cost of labor isn’t feasible.
Spending upwards of 100 million won a year, including labor, material, and miscellaneous costs, just to taste high-end cuisine is something even the rich would hesitate to do.
Instead, if the cost per meal is around 1 million won, while an ordinary person can’t dream of it, someone with some cash would love to challenge themselves to try “noble” food at least once.
“Serve about ten dishes like roasted pork leg heavily coated in pepper, decorative food colored with spices or dyes, and cakes made at Cafe Medici. Price per person? About 1 silver coin.”
“Is there really profit to be made at that price? I feel like I’d need to charge at least 4 silver coins.”
“If the menu is uniform and you attract a large crowd, you’ll have leftover money.”
Chris pondered for a moment, then sighed.
“If a lot of people line up, there might be some profit, but can that many people really come?”
I can assure you, having lived in a world where people flock to 5-star hotel buffets, Michelin 3-star restaurants, and omakase, where a single meal can cost tens of thousands of won.
In a city like Florence, a respectable restaurant selling noble cuisine will have citizens lining up.
“We don’t only go to 5-star hotel buffets just for the food, you know.”
“Logically speaking, only the superrich would want to come to our restaurant. But humans are driven more by emotions and feelings than logic.”
If one were to think purely logically, nobles wouldn’t need to be so desperately seeking beautiful concubines.
It would be cheaper to just take in several women who seem likely to bear offspring.
As for food, they’d probably only want to eat cheap options like rat meat, and wouldn’t feel the urge to indulge or show off.
However, since humans have emotions and sentimental thoughts alongside reason…
They desire to embrace beautiful women, crave delicious food, and wage wars just to enjoy a bit more wealth and glory.
Truth be told, reason might just be a tool to efficiently fulfill human instincts, you know?
“Think of it this way: For just 1 silver coin per person, they can experience being the guest of honor at a noble banquet.”
At that, both Chris and Chloe’s eyes lit up.
“Dishes that delight the eyes—so beautiful and extravagant, accompanied by lovely music and sophisticated furniture reminiscent of a lavish dream banquet of nobles.”
In every age and every country, it’s the same.
Once basic needs are met, humans seek out luxury.
Among luxuries, one that can be relatively easily indulged in is gourmet food, which wealthy people often partake in (even if they seldom get the time).
That’s precisely why trends like omakase or hotel buffet certifications once sparked a craze.
“Indulging in luxury feels like one is becoming sophisticated.”
Especially in a world where a class system truly exists, and discrimination is out in the open.
People despise nobles, feeling they have to keep looking up at them, yet they are still curious.
How satisfying would it be to enjoy the same food as them, relishing the taste of opulence?
That would be the ultimate luxury they can dream of.
And soon, they’d become addicted.
It’s rare to find someone who hasn’t visited a 5-star hotel buffet, but once someone experiences it, they’re likely to go back again and again if they don’t have any major issues.
Chris, it seems, finally understood my point, nodding as she replied.
“I think there’s merit in what the Baron says. If there really is an opportunity to enjoy the luxury that only nobles have once a year, everyone would want to attend. However, to capture that noble feeling, we need at least some basic table manners, furniture, and a chef to handle the courses…”
“It’s true, acquiring such high-end personnel is quite challenging.”
We could probably find a decent chef just by asking the chef guild for recommendations (not coercing with weapons, mind you).
But finding someone who can simplify etiquette while maintaining elegance is…
“Only a long-serving servant to the higher-ups would fit the bill.”
They are likely to resist doing such work.
But I have a plan.
“Use spies to find a chef and someone who can arrange the courses. I’ll handle the rest.”
A few days later, I went to meet someone waiting in the reception room, armed with the necessary tools for persuasion (not torture devices).
“It’s truly an honor that you’ve come all the way to my humble mansion.”