Shef
You are greeted by the ringing of the carillon and the scent of strange and exotic spices. Interior is chic with silken seats (you note they have metamorphic backs to accommodate less humanoid patrons).
Dishes, they look somewhat more Indian in construction, though by and large none of their components are recognizably Indian, indeed while there are a few curries, stews, soups, and minces are more common, with some kinda of versatile pastry that looks like a flowering vine filling in for the rice and naan bread.
"<Graveroot>" your host explains, a hardy plant that grows near untended graves and corpse strewn battlefields, its thick vines pierce into corpses draining them of blood, flesh, and marrow, necrotic magics consuming them to fuel the plant's growth and giving rise to brilliant widow's blooms flowers. In a city so choked with the stench of death like Ys was, they were common place, and their inhabitants found a way to alter them to have a more palatable prey. These modified vines drain soup and mince and various other fillings, nourishing wheaty flower bulbs that char and cook themselves becoming something ressembling a fried bun, slightly chewy and flexible with a crispy almost pastry-like exterior and a hot but not burning filling. The exact texture and properties can be engineered using tasteless additives added to foods as to effectively program the vine's response. You can buy it from any good grocer nowadays though the best ones he notes need to come from a plant modified to suit its chef, the bigger the better, which would entail having to find a an opportunity overgrown crypt or abandoned necromancer's lab (got to be abandoned, your friendly neighborhood necromancer blacksite wants their resources well preserved and not completely drained by wild plants thank you very much), fighting through whatever the hell set up shop there, and dragging the damn thing all the way back out. "<That, was an ordeal. Smelled like dead fish for weeks.>"
"<That why you burned yourself alive?>"
Such is the greeting of the grinning maître d', sweeping in to meet you both and usher you to your seats. It's a small staff booth, tucked away in the corner, but it's cozy.
"<You could say that.>"
Guy really could, he fucking burst into flames shortly after you fished him out of the lake and came out of it starchy dry.
"<So, how's your day?>"
"<Same old, same old, who's your date?>"
"<Sparring partner. Name's Shef, he's from Earth.>"
An impressed whistle.
"<I'll have to ask sometime, here>"
He tosses you and you alone a menu and heads off.
Front has the whole fucking backstory to the cuisine, middle has the dishes, back has the drinks.
The Avalonian Cider looks pretty popular, crisp acidity problem helping with the heartier dishes. Comes in alcoholic, non-alcoholic, and oh, well that explains a lot. On a sliding scale from "safe to drive" to "utterly shitfaced", alcoholic occupies the second lowest bracket of the spectrum. You've a feeling when Yuki ordered drinks last night, the "non-alcoholic" was more a testament to the drink's potency than its lack of consequence.
Dishes, it's a sliding scale, double axis really, some more European, some more Eastern, some you can mostly understand others entirely exotic.
As for the story, well how it goes is that the Ville d'Ys was once a kingdom sitting somewhere in the Baie de Douarnenez, a land reclaimed from the sea and beset on all sides by the waves. It was an engineering marvel back in its day, well, until the floodgates were opened anyway, drowning the entire populace save for its king. Sunk back into the sea, the doomed kingdom found itself in the Aethertide like so many lost cities before it, and in time it's populace would rise again as the undead.
The early years were rough, the now-small populace having to basically relearn how to fish in the supernatural realm of the Aethertide, where the fish are often a little less cooperative than those back on Earth. They had to rely on whatever stores of food remained, the only food unspoilt that which was preserved, either intentionally or by chance thanks to brine from its flooding. Supposedly the food from those lean years would go on to shape their cuisine with its preserved meats and pickled vegetables, heavy flavors from salts and spices, both to preserve and to pierce through to those whose senses had been dulled by undeath.
The second influence came later, in the form of some very very lost Chinese explorers stumbling across the reborn city. Many would wind up settling there. Those who stayed brought with them memories of their cuisine, homesick sailors trying to make emulate the meat buns of their homeland with the meat pastries rooted back in Medieval France, and in time these early experiments would give rise to what became the modern Ysian dim sim you see at every table. Those that left eventually managed to find new lands, and reconnect Ys with other lands of the realm, its old trade networks slowly but surely rebuilt in this new worlds introducing new influences and of course, new exotic spices, spices which of course now feature in their dishes.
Author
Topic: Tengoku no Owari SI IC: Yuki Is (Not) Fine (Read 226495 times)