Chapter 197: Chapter 180 – A Filling Meal

"For an easy way to get some hints about the people living in a region, simply look for eateries serving up some local specialties. Nuances from these can often clue you in on the sort of people that populate the region, as they tend to channel a good bit of their personalities into their foods." - Julius Venfried, Bard and traveler, known for having traveled the whole of Alcidea in his lifetime.

It turned out that they had not needed to go far to find their meal. Not long after they exited the inn, all of them turned their heads towards one direction, as their noses caught a rich, meaty, milky fragrance with a hint of sourness to it. A quick look and an exchange of nods from everyone had Cal lead them to the source of the scent.

 

The source of the fragrance was not a hard one to find. It came from an eatery four houses to the left and across the street from the inn they stayed at, one which was more a rudimentary setup instead of a fully enclosed building like the inn they stayed at, just a transparent roof supported by four thick pillars at the corner and a larger pillar at the center.

 

Why the place was arranged so became obvious to her as she saw the truly massive pan set near the enclosed center of the eatery, an open kitchen. A truly massive pan was there, set above a low fire. The pan was at least two and a half meters in diameter, probably more, and a burly dwarf was mixing its contents with a long handled shovel from the side.

 

As for said contents, Cal saw a massive amount of cooked rice, tinted a pale yellowish color by spices being stirred up. On top of the bed of rice were many chunks of meat still on the bones, cooked until the meat just literally fell off the bones when they got moved.

 

Cal also saw what looked like a thick, milky gravy at the bottom of the pan as the dwarf stirred the mixture, and noted how he skillfully picked up the now meatless bones then whacked them on one end over the rice, causing whitish marrow to ooze out from them.

 

A long line had already formed, from both open sides of the eatery, since the opposite Cal came from opened to another street. She brought the girls to join the queue on their side, and found that the line moved fast, with customers happily moving to tables in groups with massive platters of the rice dish.

 

As the line got moving, Cal kept an ear open at how the other customers ordered. Apparently the eatery didn't sell their food by portions like most, but by weight, with Cal noticing most customers ordering roughly a third to half a kilo of food per person they have with them.

 

When it came to their turn to order, Cal just went ahead and ordered three kilos for the seven of them, along with some drinks. The dwarf by the pan literally shoveled the food, weighed it for a moment in his hands, then piled it on the large plate, repeating until he felt the weight was right.

 

In the end Cal had to use both hands to carry the massive plate with their food, while Dan helped her carry the pitchers of drink and everyone else got some mugs for their use. After Cal placed the plate on the center of a table large enough to seat them all comfortably with room to spare, they began to eat.

 

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Since they had seen how the other customers ate, they knew that the lack of any utensils provided was not a mistake, but intentional, as everyone in the eatery were eating with their hands instead.

 

With the other customers as an example, Cal picked up a chunk of tender meat and grabbed it along with a chunk of the rice using one hand. The rice was firm, but moist from both the gravy and the milky sauce poured over it before the platter was handed to her. Carefully she molded the food into a somewhat firm ball, and tossed the result into her mouth.

 

The flavors that greeted her as she chewed was milky, meaty, and rich. A hint of sourness cut through the richness, which she realized came from both the gravy the rice was cooked in and the sauce. Some sort of fermented milk, perhaps?

 

As for the rice itself, they were long-grained, easily twice as long as the rice usually grown in Al-Shan, and quite firm without any noticeable stickiness, whereas back where she came from rice was sticky enough it was often used as glue at times. The rice itself was lightly spiced, allowing the rich flavor from the gravy, meat, and bone marrow to carry well with it as a canvas.

 

Cal thought the tender meat, cooked so long that it just disintegrated on chewing, was more an accent to the overall flavor instead of being the main focus, which in this case was clearly the gravy and the sauce. After she chewed and swallowed, she reached her hand out to the platter and grabbed another chunk of rice and meat, noticing that everyone else did so as well or had already done so sooner.

 

In the end, it turned out that three kilos of food for the seven of them was just enough to sate their appetites properly, without going overboard. They washed down the hearty, filling meal with either some cold blend of lemon juice and mint, heavily sweetened, or a hot tea with a strong minty flavor to it. Both served as a good foil to the rich meal with the mintyness helping to wash down the flavors.

 

With their bellies satisfied, she went to the counter to pay for their meal, then brought everyone back to their room at the inn, where they happily laid down on their mattresses and chatted for a bit, until they felt sleepy and turned in for the night.

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