Volume 2, Chapter 13: Troubles with early summer lunch.
The next day, Zeke informed Helena at work that a royal chef would be there to help today, and she rejoiced. Keith came at the appointed time, and he was introduced to Helena. To Zeke’s surprise, Helena recognized him.
Apparently Keith had come by every so often as a customer. He was quite memorable as it was rare for a man to come to the café alone. Keith’s friendliness was no obstacle for Helena and they hit it off right away.
Zeke didn’t know Keith came to the café as he was always cooped up in the kitchen cooking. He found Keith’s friendliness appalling, but he tried to convince himself that it was better than an awkward kitchen.
There wasn’t much time until the café opened, so they busied themselves with preparations. First Zeke explained the equipment and cooking ware. While he listened, Keith tried handling all the tools, including adjusting the heat of the stove. As expected of a chef, he examined each tool closely.
Once Zeke finished explaining the equipment, he talked about the lunch menu today. Keith looked at the list of recipes and asked, “Did Lady Risa think up this menu?”
“No, I did.”
“… I see.”
Keith muttered under his breath after some thought. His tone felt off to Zeke, but they had no time for him to question Keith further.
Keith did his work efficiently, asking questions whenever he couldn’t find tools or he didn’t understand the recipe.
At first they both prepared lunch when the store opened, but soon Keith could handle all the lunch orders by himself. Zeke left lunch to Keith and concentrated on preparing the desserts for tea time. The sponge cakes and tart bases were already baked, so he decorated them with fruits, custard and whipping cream.
He worked on the shortcake that was quickly becoming a regular item on the menu and fruit tarts filled with custard and decorated with fruits of the current season. No-bake cheesecakes and the popular puddings were already chilling in the fridge.
Once he finished decorating, he moved to bake the meat pies for people who didn’t like sweets.
Because they had Keith, the café ran much smoother than the day before yesterday. Angelica still came to help out, but once the lunch crowd slowed, she went back to work at the magical tools store.
It was around the end of lunch time when Helena entered the kitchen with a troubled expression.
“Mister Keith, we’ve sold out all the pasta lunch sets for today, right?”
“Aahh, yeah.”
“I knew it…”
Helena slumped her shoulders and left the kitchen, only to return in a flurry.
“Would it be possible to make one more serving of the pasta lunch set? I recommended a different set, but the customer persisted that they would like the pasta…”
Keith peeked into the fridge at Helena’s words.
“Well, we don’t have enough ingredients… It’s technically possible to make it if we don’t add the mallow topping. Could you ask the customer if they would still be okay with that?”
Keith suggested, and Helena left the kitchen with a bright “yes!” She immediately returned to say, “The customer would be fine with that.”
“Gotcha.”
Keith had already started boiling water, and upon Helena’s reply he began to cook the pasta. Zeke sighed in relief, having watched the whole affair.
The finished pasta sans mallow set was brought out of the kitchen by Helena, and lunch time finally ended.
Zeke checked the stock of desserts and began to make more, prioritizing the ones that were more popular—today, that was the no-bake cheesecake, pudding, and ice cream. While he could make more pudding, they had no more cream cheese to make cheesecake, so he made the fruit jelly he brought to Risa the other day instead.
Zeke put Keith in charge of washing all the dishes from lunch time while he concentrated on making sweets.
After a while, Keith finished the dishes and came over, asking Zeke to give him something to do.
Zeke set him to work on cookies. Although they didn’t have an immediate need for it, it was a favorite on the to-go menu, so there was no harm in cooking more.
Keith quickly learned how to work with the baking tray and hummed while he worked. However, he would leave the kitchen to help Helena at the front when it got busy, and his quick reactions helped keep the café running smoothly. Zeke was impressed by how well he adapted to a new setting and his ability.
Even though there was a small incident with the shortage of pasta lunch sets, closing time rolled by with the employees much more relaxed and comfortable with their workload.
Keith had washed dishes whenever he was free, so there wasn’t much left to wash. Zeke finished up the last few teacups and looked around the kitchen to see if he had missed anything. That was when he saw the pot left on the stove. He opened the lid and exclaimed, “… What…”
The pot still held a large amount of stew.
“Ahh… So you’ve noticed?”
Keith stopped cleaning the countertop to look towards Zeke.
“Why is there so much left?”
Not only were there more than one or two servings, but the pot was still half full. Zeke took a step forward and questioned Keith, who seemed to know something.
“Calm down, I’ll explain in a bit. Here, Helena, you should come and listen too.”
Keith raised a hand to stop Zeke from advancing further and waved to Helena. Once they surrounded the pot on the stove, he began his explanation.
“Regarding the lunch sets, pasta was all sold out to the point of shortage while there was a lot of soup left.”
Keith glanced at the pot. Helena looked inside for the first time and mumbled, “this much?”
“Do you know why, Zeke?”
They had always prepared two lunch sets, but there had never been such an imbalance in the orders before. Zeke mulled over what went wrong.
Next to him, Helena slowly began to speak.
“… This is just my gut, but… Was it because the weather was so good today?”
She said with no confidence, to which Keith nodded.
… The weather was good? What does that have to do with anything?
Zeke still didn’t understand.
“What about it, you ask?”
Keith said, and Zeke jumped at his words.
“The lunch set entree for today was either summer vegetable oil pasta or summer vegetable stew. The customers took one look at the menu Helena wrote on the blackboard and decided on pasta. On a hot day like this, do you think customers would order hot stew? If I was a customer, I wouldn’t unless I had some very important reason. Stew is best eaten when you feel cold. Stew is thick, so it’s hard to cool, and the flavor is rich from the milk. There was really only one choice for lunch today, especially for regulars who had eaten stew before.”
Zeke had no words to defend himself. Looking back now, the cold desserts sold well, and he washed many glasses. Keith’s silence upon seeing the menu must have been because he had foreseen this problem.
“Well, the ingredients might be wasted but you learned something! It’s your first time deciding the menu for the day, too. Don’t worry about it.”
Zeke was furious that he hadn’t seen the problem at all. Not only that, but it had to be spelled out to him by Keith of all people, as if to rub salt on an open wound. Zeke closed his right hand into a fist until his knuckles turned white.
“I didn’t notice this either when I was trying to make up menus at the royal palace. According to Lady Risa, people have different tastes for different things depending how they feel as well as the weather and temperature that day. If you think about it, you’d want to drink something cold on a hot day or when you’re thirsty, right? That also applies to food. I kind of got it after eating the food Lady Risa makes, but I’m still nowhere near Lady Risa’s level when it comes to menu-making. Her power comes from knowing all of this as if it were common sense. Well, you learn by doing, eh? Practice makes perfect.”
Keith patted Zeke’s shoulder, said “good luck,” and returned to cleaning the countertop.
In the end, Zeke brought home the rest of the stew as his family had more mouths to feed.
His mother was happy to save some food money, and his stew-loving sister jumped for joy, but Zeke did not find the stew tasty at all.
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