This is our dish. This is our dish.

Mina brings the dishes to the judges' table.
All the judges gasped at the strange array of dishes on the table.

Hmmm, what's this ......

There was a dish of bite-sized rice with a variety of seafood demon ingredients on top.

It's called SUSI, a traditional dish from my hometown. Please dip a bite into your soy sauce when you eat it.

This is the seafood dish I prepared for you. You can enjoy various flavors of seafood in bite-sized dishes.
Above all, the strength of this nigiri sushi is that seafood is not the only staple food.
In recent years, the variety of meat and vegetable ingredients in sushi has increased, making it more appealing.
This way, I can use freshly grown monsters for the ingredients.
I call it SUSI here because it's a different world style sushi.

It's interesting how you can enjoy different flavors in every bite.

After the judges had eaten it, they put various ingredients of SUSI into their mouths one after another.
Then I signaled Mina to put the food I had prepared in advance on the judge's table.

Here is a special drink called tea. This is a special drink called tea. Please drink it between sips of SUSI.

Hmm, it's quite clever of you to have a drink as well.

One of the judges takes a sip of the tea that was placed there.
I let out a breath of admiration at my first taste of the flavored water.

Although the judges' evaluations are generally favorable, they will still be hazy in front of the wise man's full course.
The question is whether the judges will notice the trick we have prepared for them. Or will they give us credit for it.
It's the only way for us to win.

Now we bring the final dish, the main dish of the evening, in front of the judges.

Thank you for waiting. This is our main dish, a stacked box with Leviathan meat grilled on skewers with a special sauce and topped with rice. It's also known as Liver Juice.

The meat of the Leviathan was broiled with my secret sauce and placed on top of freshly cooked rice, the so-called eel-jyu.
Of course, I had prepared a stacked box for this occasion. You have to eat the unagi (eel) with this.

"Hoho.

It's the best we can do.
All we have to do now is wait for the judges.
One by one, the judges bring the Rivajeu in front of them to their mouths.
The rich smell of the riva-juice wafts through the hall, and the voices in the hall, which had been filled with Kasarina a moment ago, fall silent and a sound like drool can be heard.

Before long, all the judges had finished their riva stew, sipped their tea, and caught their breath.

...... That was a really good dish. Now it's time for the evaluation.

A hush falls over the venue.
In the grand cooking competition, five judges decide which dish is better than the other.

The first judge is the wise and brave man.
d*mn, it's not that easy.
But the second judge, Mina and Kyou, voted for this one.
But in the third person, the wise men and heroes. And then the fourth, again with us, the vote was 2 to 2.

Oops!　This is surprising!　What a difference of votes with the previous year's runner-up, Kasarina!　Despite being an unknown rookie, this is an unexpected development!　The final verdict is now in the hands of the gourmet master!

The Gourmet Master.
It was an old man who gulped in admiration as he drank the tea we had just prepared.
He crossed his arms quietly and then, as if he had made up his mind, unfolded a piece of paper on which he had written one of the names.

The name on it was...

"Nah ......

I can feel the wise man next to me gasp.
Yes....because that's what I'm thinking too. I'm surprised myself, to be honest.

The names on it were Mina and Keogh.

Wha-ha!　No way a big turnaround!　The winners are Mina and Kyou, representatives of the small diner!

Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!

Mina jumped on my body, with a loud cheer in the background, and Phytis, Dora, and Locke, who were waiting for me, came running to me, as if they were playing with me.

To be honest, I wasn't expecting things to go so well, and I've been in high spirits since a while ago.

But in contrast to us, there's someone who, despite being shocked, still maintains a calm demeanor and responds to the gourmet master by saying "I'm not satisfied with the result.

I'm not going to complain about the outcome of the game. I'm not going to complain about the outcome. But first I want you to tell me one thing. I want to know why their food won.

There were no feelings of complaint, just a sense of pride as a chef who genuinely wanted to know the factors that would determine the winner.
Upon hearing the wise man's question, the gourmet master spoke up.

To answer your question, I would like to ask your cook first, or rather the creator of this. What is it?

To the gourmet master's question, I immediately responded.

It's called soy sauce".

There is what the gourmet master pointed to, the black water dipped in when eating sushi. Soy sauce.


And I was referring to the sauce dipped in rivajeu.

Yes, one of the two major all-purpose condiments in Japanese cuisine. Soy sauce.
I believe it's one of the best of all seasonings.
A Japanese person might be too young to understand its value, but I've heard that many people take soy sauce with them when they travel abroad, because they miss the taste of soy sauce when they taste the various dishes in their mouths.

The food culture in this world is similar to that of the United States abroad.
Everything is big and bold. The flavors are very distinct, which is both an advantage and a disadvantage.
There are far fewer condiments because there is less attention to detail.
That is, the little trick I did was to use that seasoning, soy sauce.

After making tea before, I succeeded in growing the jewel beans, and after that, I've been making soy sauce on the side, and the other day I finished making it.
The sauce was also applied to make a sauce that can be used for this game. Thanks to Mina's help, we were able to complete it.
Of course, this game was not so easy to win on its own.

Let's get this out of the way, wise man and hero. Your food was better as a stand-alone dish. But I still voted for them because their attention to detail surpassed that of the whole dish.

"What?

The wise and brave man frowns at the unexpected comment of the gourmet master.
The gourmet master offers her sushi and tea in front of her.
As she sipped the tea and occasionally drank the tea, Kasarina noticed something.

This is ......

Yes, a natural palate. You chose seafood and served it to me. It's true that your seafood is the best in the world, but there is a flaw in your seafood dishes. Seafood has a flaw that leaves a lasting taste on your tongue.

Seafood dishes. It is the dish that brings out the best flavor of the ingredients in their entirety, and the fresher the dish, the greater the freshness, the worse the harm that is inevitable.
That is the fishy smell that remains in your mouth.

Of course, the fresher it is, the less likely it is to remain, but no matter how fresh it is, it will still have its own unique taste in the mouth.

I myself like seafood and eat it from time to time. However, if the food is raw after the meal, the taste of seafood will be left on your tongue.
To wash it away, what I do is to drink strong tea.

I'd say this was the most hidden part of the food they served.

Yes, that's exactly the trick I came up with a month ago.
Hot water born of the mountain's bounty to wash away the taste of the sea. It's tea.

Since then the weed leaf called weed has been improved and now it has established itself as a more flavorful tea than before.
Not to mention its deliciousness, it had made the perfect drinking water to wash away the flavors of the foods you had been eating.

With any dish, the taste of the previous dish remains in your mouth when you take the next one. But the bitterness of the hot water will wash away any residual taste before the next dish is brought to your mouth. It allows you to enjoy a fresher dish with a new taste buds. Not only that, the bitterness of this hot water combined with all of the seafood dishes served had a synergistic effect of making a simple drink taste better. I've been a judge for many years, but they are the first to bring a way to enhance the taste of a drink instead of a dish.

Yes, that's exactly what is called palate cleansing, which originated in Japan.
A typical example is with tea. The old gourmet master noticed my little trick and gave me credit for it.

Their main dishes are SUSI and Riva Juice. But the main course is supported by a small supporting cast called tea and condiments. Their food was lean and thoughtful. That's why I appreciated their care and voted for them.

So you're saying that I was defeated by caring?

No, no. Kasarina. Your cooking skills are improving. But was there even one dish you served that was unexpected or, better yet, worthy of this 'food frontier'?

!

Kasarina's face changed at that point.

All your dishes are excellent, there is no doubt about that. But they are all just 'conventional' dishes. If it were just a 'good food' competition, you would have won, but this is a 'food competition' to 'explore new dishes'. You have misunderstood the purpose of this competition. Therefore, I judged them for creating not only food, but also soy sauce and tea, which were 'new' things.

Hearing the gourmet master's words, the wise man nodded as if he understood what his cause of defeat was.
Yes....is that what you meant by 'food development'?
Of course I wasn't aware of it.
It was simply a game of earth knowledge, curiosity and tricks, but it seemed to grasp the purpose of this competition.
To be honest, a lot of it depended on luck, but I'm thankful for it.

...... I see. Certainly I would have won on taste alone. But I lost because I lost sight of the purpose of this contest and was only concerned with "taste. ...... No, I lost because I didn't care about the people who ate it, and I didn't try to develop a new kind of food.

And Kasarina nodded.
Perhaps if this was just a simple taste contest, we would have lost.
We were able to win not only because of seasonings, monsters, and cooking methods, but also because of luck and chance.
But if this is one of the hidden treasures of the grand culinary competition, then I must take the result with a grain of salt.
And it was the same for Kasarina.

It's all about hunting the highest-ranked monsters and making the best of it. I have been so focused on efficiency that I have forgotten how to care for the people who eat them.

Then Katharine turned to me and shook my hand.

"I'm losing, Keogh.

I held her proffered hand and here the first round of the big cook-off came to an end.