dmims Chapter 153
Chapter 153
Chapter 153. I Can Do It — If It's Me! (6)
"A splendid meal, Countess Marianne."
"Nowhere in Nortaris could one find dining of this calibre. The Royal Kitchen of Y&P Trading Company doesn't even come close."
"Should it not be the venerable Blanchard family, rather than Y&P, that upholds the dignity of fine dining's finest?"
The praise of the Social Circles.
'The Golden Mermaid — the pinnacle of Northern fine dining.'
'Y&P's Royal Kitchen: New Year's reservations cancelled one after another. The limits of a mass-market image?'
Recognition from the press.
"Countess! The second round of investment! A success! On top of that, an additional hundred memberships have been sold!"
Money and investment funds pouring in.
"Countess! Baron Winterborne wishes to hold his eldest son's engagement luncheon at our Golden Mermaid!"
Two weeks after opening, successfully staking its claim as the undisputed centre of the Northern Social Circles.
Marianne no longer harboured even a sliver of doubt about her success.
Of course, there had been the tiniest flicker of unease.
The Golden Mermaid's courses were flawless, but the menu's range was narrow. Nobles and local powerhouses were fickle and grew bored easily. Marianne herself was the first proof of that.
"What does Y&P do about that……?"
On this point, Marianne benchmarked CCC and Royal Kitchen. Y&P maintained its popular menu items while endlessly branching out with new dishes, gauging public response and refining the menu as it went.
They had even devised something called a seasonal menu — special dishes available only during a given season.
"Chef Gabriel."
"Yes, Countess."
"I think we need to diversify our cuisine a little further."
There was no letting an expensive talent go to waste. Marianne put the capital's finest Chef to perfect use.
"Huhuh, please look forward to it."
Chef Gabriel, too, had his shoulders puffed with pride at the North's reception, which had been far warmer than anticipated. For some reason, the Northern nobles had shown a far more enthusiastic response than the prim and proper nobles of the capital.
And on top of that, his employer Marianne was supplying him with ingredients that even money struggled to procure. He was free to show off his skills to his heart's content.
And so the additional dishes that followed were lavish and extravagant.
An enormous abalone soup, a Carabineros ceviche, and a colossal king crab steamed whole.
The result? A resounding success.
Returning guests were enraptured by the new dishes The Golden Mermaid unveiled.
"The courses are even more lavish than last time!"
"The best thing I've spent money on this year was buying a membership here."
"Did you hear? The membership price keeps rising too. If you sell it to someone else later, it counts as a rather tidy investment!"
"Come now. Why would you resell a Golden Mermaid membership? You'd lose access to food like this."
Marianne sat in her office, listening to these customer responses being relayed to her, and gave a satisfied nod.
"Bernard, see that? This is me."
In her hand, the newly arrived third round of investment contracts were fluttering lightly.
"What would have happened if we hadn't filled the reservations out of fear of running a deficit? Would money have come pouring in like this?"
"Ahem……"
Bernard could no longer say a word. To be perfectly honest, when the young lady had spoken of selling off the family assets to launch a new venture……
He hadn't expected it to go this well.
Was it possible that he had been labouring under some great misapprehension all along? What if Lady Marianne was a once-in-a-generation business genius, and Bernard had simply been the one holding back the spreading of her wings?
"Ugh……"
But something still felt off. Bernard felt a nameless unease gnawing at him from within, something he could not quite put into words.
***
On a clear day.
Today was the day of the coronation — the day The Golden Mermaid would truly be reborn as the heart of the Northern community. The engagement luncheon for Baron Winterborne's eldest son, the occasion Marianne had most eagerly awaited and most painstakingly prepared for, was scheduled to take place.
"An engagement at The Golden Mermaid, my. The Baron must have spent quite a sum."
"Sending a son off to marry late. One can hardly afford to be sparing. Hahahah!"
"I'll make sure to fill the congratulatory envelope generously."
In Britannia too, a wedding was a grand affair. The lavish hall, elevated by Marianne's own aesthetic sensibility, was packed with figures from the Social Circles without a single inch to spare.
"To achieve such explosive growth in such a short time. How remarkable."
"Oh my, you flatter me."
"Is it not a far faster growth than Y&P?"
"Ohoho, I've never really thought about Y&P, so I wouldn't quite know."
Marianne appeared at intervals to show her face, endlessly imprinting upon everyone present that the host of this establishment was none other than 'Marianne Blanchard.' Everything was going smoothly.
That is — until the engagement ceremony ended and the luncheon was about to begin.
"……Hm?"
A Count who had been eating quietly set down his fork.
"What is it, Count?"
"Well, hmm……"
The Count prodded at the lobster flesh with his fork.
"Today's Lobster seems to lack the sweetness of last week's, somehow. The texture feels a touch soft as well……"
"Does it? I can't quite tell myself……"
In truth, this was a complaint that would never have surfaced before. But the palates of Britannia's nobles, who over the past three years had experienced fine dining in various ways, had risen to a level where they could discern with considerably more precision what tasted good and what did not.
"No, no, taste it again yourself. It's definitely different, I tell you."
"Now that you mention it, perhaps."
Whether it was because the Count's voice had carried, voices murmuring in agreement began to emerge, heads tilting in puzzlement.
Marianne's smile, which had been following the guests' reactions, stiffened. She immediately dashed to the kitchen.
"Gabriel! Come here for a moment."
Gabriel, who had been sweating profusely while cooking alongside the other chefs, approached Marianne with a guilty flinch.
"The guests are expressing dissatisfaction with the dishes. What has happened here?"
A look of difficulty crossed Gabriel's face.
Chef Gabriel led Marianne to the refrigerator.
Inside were the raw ingredients delivered early that morning.
"These are today's Blue Lobsters. However, the condition is……"
The boxes were piled high with lobsters glimmering with a lustrous blue. On the surface, they appeared no different from usual. Large in size and seemingly fresh. Some were even still moving.
"No, Countess. Please look at this."
Gabriel pulled out a single lobster submerged between ice and sawdust.
"The size is subtly smaller. The sheen of the shell is different too, and several of them are missing legs. The yield isn't great either. If what we've had until now was premium grade, then today's is, in all frankness, merely standard grade. For guests who were expecting premium, it may have felt somewhat lacking."
Chef Gabriel drew a clear line. The message was that the quality of the ingredients was not his responsibility. And that was not entirely untrue.
However, Marianne flared up.
"How can you, knowing how important today's occasion is……! Why was this not reported to me?"
"I-I did report it! But you instructed me to proceed regardless……"
Marianne felt a jolt of realisation. Come to think of it, Gabriel had come to find her this morning and said something.
At the time she had been occupied with arranging the floral decorations for the ceremony and let it go in one ear and out the other. She had genuinely been extraordinarily busy — but the negligence was hers. She could not blame Gabriel for this.
"Understood. For now, please see the courses through to the end."
"Yes, Countess."
Marianne turned on her heel and went swiftly to Bernard.
"Bernard! Where are you!"
"Yes, Countess. Right here."
Marianne dragged Bernard into a secluded corridor.
"Why are the raw ingredients in that state? We're paying three times the price and they send us something like that — what do they think they're doing! Are they trying to swindle us?"
Swindle. One of the three great curses — alongside cults and gambling — that could bring a noble family to ruin.
"N-no. That is……"
Bernard retrieved a single sheet of paper from inside his jacket. It was an urgent message sent early that morning by the Black Sail Guild.
[Blue Lobster premium stock fully exhausted. Standard grade dispatched as substitute for today. Furthermore, due to a waterspout occurring within the Deep Sea Demon Realm, availability of next week's supply is uncertain.]
"Stock…… exhausted?"
Marianne felt as though she had been struck over the head with a mallet.
"But why didn't you report this to me right away this morning?"
"I did! You said, Countess……"
"I said?"
"……To proceed with whatever was available……"
Ah, it came back to her. Bernard had indeed come to find her in the morning, going on about some logistics issue and trying to hold her back. Similarly, her attention had been so completely consumed by the ceremony side of things that she hadn't taken it in.
"Blast! For now, I'll sort this out somehow myself!"
There was no time for self-reproach.
Marianne gathered her skirt hem and rushed back to the hall where the luncheon was still underway.
Her feet stopped in front of the Count who had first raised the complaint.
"Count, has the food been to your liking today?"
"Ah, Countess Blanchard."
The Count clicked his tongue with an expression of mild difficulty.
"It is as splendid as always, and yet…… today, somehow, the taste feels a touch less satisfying than last time, I must say. Haha."
As the Count, flustered yet still saying what had to be said, received the attention of the surrounding tables —
"Oh my goodness!"
"……?"
Marianne clapped her hands as though she had been waiting for precisely this, putting on an expression of astonishment.
"As expected of you, Count! To pick up on such a subtle difference with such precision."
"Well, I simply thought compared to last time it was somewhat—"
"To tell you the truth, today's Lobster was selected to pair with the champagne being served alongside it."
Laying it on thickly, Marianne pressed on before the displeased Count.
"I too noticed something tasted a little different from usual and asked Chef Gabriel about it — apparently he deliberately chose a Lobster with a slightly less sweet, cleaner flavour specifically for today! To think you caught this nuance! How truly remarkable!"
"Oho! Was that it! Of course! Did you all hear that? This is the level I operate at."
The face of the Count, who had been voicing complaints, broke into a broad smile. Those around him nodded along appreciatively as well.
"Ahh, so there was such a considered intention behind it."
"As expected, The Golden Mermaid is something else entirely!"
Marianne had more or less managed to smooth over the situation. She breathed an inward sigh of relief.
And that evening.
"Haah, what an ordeal."
Marianne grumbled as she sank onto the sofa. In front of her stood Bernard, wearing a grave expression.
"Countess, today we scraped through, but…… for next week's reservation guests, we may not be able to serve Blue Lobster."
"I know. There are plenty of other premium ingredients, aren't there? Let's write off the Blue Lobster and switch to something else."
The finish line was right there.
"Just because we're missing one Lobster, does that mean we can't do business? Contact the Black Sail Guild. If there's no Lobster, then Abalone, King Crab…… tell them to substitute with whatever the finest premium grade available is. I don't care if we pay five times, ten times the price!"
From this point on, more and more banquets and events would come pouring into The Golden Mermaid.
This was a watershed moment of victory or defeat — one she absolutely could not afford to retreat from.
However, today's incident was only the beginning. For in the blink of an eye, a cascade of problems had begun erupting within The Golden Mermaid.