Chapter 116:
Jerky
THE ACCIDENT HAPPENED at lunchtime. A customer finished eating, paid, and was on her way out of the restaurant, failing to notice she’d left a large bag on her table.
Seeing the bag, Saki called out. “Ah—wait! You forgot something!”
The dog-eared customer, who wore a satisfied expression, had already stepped outside. “Huh?! That’s—” She turned in surprise just as the door closed.
“Crud,” Saki blurted out.
Otherworldly customers could only visit Nekoya on Saturdays. Once they stepped back outside the door, they had to wait a whole week. So, obviously, the soonest Saki could return this customer’s bag was in seven days.
Saki thought the coarse bag had probably been made in the guest’s world. She lifted it; it was quite heavy, probably over a kilogram, and smelled ever so slightly of blood. She looked inside at the contents—a large lump wrapped in leaves. “Some kind of meat,” she guessed, based on the pink stains seeping across the leaves. “It’s totally raw, isn’t it?”
The master noticed Saki standing with a befuddled look on her face and a bag in her hands. Passing a finished order to Aletta, he came over. “What’s up? Did something happen?”
“A customer left this,” Saki explained. “What should we do, Uncle? It’s definitely raw.” She didn’t know what kind of meat it was, but they couldn’t just leave it sitting around the restaurant.
“Sure is. We can put it in the fridge for now, I suppose,” the master decided.
✦ ✦ ✦
That evening, the master removed the bag from the fridge and opened it, tilting his head. “Raw meat, huh? What’re we going to do with it?” he mused to Saki and Aletta. “I can’t say I’ve ever seen this kind of meat before.”
The master regularly purchased meat and other groceries from Thomas of the Alfade Company, so perhaps this was a rare variety far out of reach of even someone living in the capital like Thomas. The master wasn’t sure what animal the pink lump of lean meat came from, but from the cut, it looked like a brisket.
It’d be a week before the bag’s owner could come pick it up, and since the meat was raw, keeping it in the fridge wouldn’t be adequate. Faced with a meat he’d never prepared, the master struggled to come up with an idea.
“What about putting it in the freezer?” Saki suggested.
“There’s too much meat for that.” The master shook his head at her. “Besides, freezing it would be fine till the customer picked it up, but once she defrosted it on the other side, she’d have to use it all at once.”
“Really? But customers like those long-eared folks always buy pudding and grilled rice balls that need to be refrigerated, don’t they?” Saki asked. She’d heard that the lizardmen who usually ordered three servings of omelet rice to-go shared their orders with the whole tribe. Maybe the people she saw buying pudding and rice balls did the same.
“I don’t know the details, but those customers use preservation magic to keep things fresh. That apparently isn’t the norm over there, though.”
The master thought back on a story he’d heard from an old mage, a regular who’d been around since the restaurant opened. The mage said there was a type of magic that preserved food for centuries. However, it was fairly high level; only tremendously skilled mages, or species like elves that excelled at magic, could wield it. According to the old mage, the guests ordering pudding to go had been the former, and the guests ordering grilled rice balls were the latter.
“Um, that’s right,” agreed Aletta. “I haven’t really heard of preserving food with magic. Sarah might’ve mentioned an elven magic item that did something like that, but it apparently cost an arm and a leg.”
Since she’d started working for Sarah, Aletta had learned a bit about how magic worked. Sarah had taught her all sorts of things, being an adventurer herself. And, as the daughter of a merchant family that dealt in magic items, her sister Shia has shared plenty with Aletta as well. Thus, Aletta now understood that though the objects in Nekoya were strange, they were not, in fact, magic items.
“Then what should we do?” asked Saki.
The master went silent in thought. They knew who’d forgotten the bag—a dark-skinned customer with dog ears and a tail who always ordered Spanish omelets. Judging by experience, she’d be back next week or the week after, and she didn’t seem well-versed in magic.
“I could make this into jerky,” the master proposed. “That’d be better than letting it spoil.” He was hesitant to cook meat belonging to the customer without her go-ahead. But since the meat in the bag was raw, and the customer couldn’t grab it for at least a week, he had no choice but to preserve it.
“You know how to do that?” asked Saki.
The master nodded. “Yup! Gramps, the old master, was the type who absolutely had to try making a delicious dish at least once on his own. He ended up dragging me into that a lot.”
The master had childhood memories of his grandfather constantly making unusual foods on days off, either at home or at the restaurant. Dishes that turned out well ended up on the menu or served as daily specials, while failed experiments simply became fond memories.
“Wow.” Watching a smile rise on her uncle’s face as he spoke, Saki could see how precious those memories were.
“It’s been a while since I last smoked meat. I should be able to make jerky from this stuff in a week, though,” added the master, who looked ready to start. His grandfather had been particularly fond of jerky—he’d tried making it from all kinds of meat—so the master was certain he could find a recipe that suited the cut in front of him.