Food

Food.

What should be the signature dish of a Japanese restaurant?

Sashimi, sushi, tempura?

In 2075, while these traditional Japanese dishes could still be synthesized from all sorts of bizarre ingredients, their vastly altered forms meant they could only occupy a spot on the menu rather than serve as the restaurant's signature offerings. In Night City's Japanese restaurants today, there was only one truly popular dish.

Grilled chicken skewers.

Jack ordered twenty of these things right away. Made from synthetic meat, they looked less like chicken skewers and more like grilled meatballs. He strongly recommended that Carl and Oliver try them.

While Carl was still wondering what exactly these chicken skewers were made of and whether they were edible, Oliver, sitting beside her, had already picked one up and started eating. He popped the meatballs into his mouth one by one, clearly enjoying them immensely. The grilled chicken skewers seemed to suit his taste perfectly.

After hesitating for a moment, Carl figured she would have to eat bugs sooner or later anyway. She picked up a chicken skewer and bit into one of the meatballs, chewing it slightly.

"Ugh."

She spat it out.

Carl was not wasting food. The impact of that thing was simply too strong. The instant she swallowed it, her lips and teeth seemed to protest, and her stomach spasmed as well. Her body was warning her that this thing could not be allowed inside, so she instinctively followed that feeling and spat it out the moment she detected danger.

How should she describe the taste? If Carl had to use two words, she would say it was awful. Three words: really awful. Four words: unbelievably awful. And if she added some uncivilized language, it would be fucking awful.

Overall, it tasted like the cheap starch-filled sausage Carl had eaten as a child—the kind even dogs would turn their noses up at—mixed with sawdust. The seasoning was overpowering too, like chewing a ball of shredded paper soaked through with soy sauce, vinegar, and crushed chili peppers. It was only possible to say that it was awful beyond imagination.

Oliver and Jack had been eating happily, but when they saw Carl frown deeply and spit out the chicken meatball after just one chew, both of them froze. Then, the same scene from countless movies flashed through their minds.

Was this thing poisoned?!

They immediately stopped eating and became wary, but Carl's words after spitting out the food made their freshly raised guard drop again.

"This thing tastes way too awful!"

"Awful?"

Jack stared at Carl's chicken skewer, which looked no different from theirs, then looked at Oliver. Oliver looked back at Jack. Both saw confusion in the other's eyes.

Wasn't this chicken skewer pretty tasty? Why did Carl say it was awful?

Could there be something wrong with Carl's skewer?

With that thought in mind, Jack picked up the chicken skewer Carl had abandoned after one bite and bit off a meatball himself. After chewing twice, a distinctly baffled expression appeared on his face.

"This tastes awful?"

"This doesn't taste awful?"

Hearing Jack and Carl, Oliver took the skewer with its single remaining meatball from Jack's hand and bit into the last piece. After chewing it a few times, he wore exactly the same expression as Jack.

"This doesn't taste awful, does it?"

Looking at Jack and Oliver's expressions, Carl more or less understood. They had both grown accustomed to this kind of low-quality food overloaded with seasoning to mask the taste. She could not accurately describe just how hard this stuff was to swallow, so she could only sigh and say, "Compared to real chicken skewers, these synthetic meat skewers taste terrible."

"Real chicken skewers?"

Oliver assumed Carl was joking because this restaurant's chicken skewers did not suit her palate. "That stuff violates Night City law. Ever since that bird flu outbreak years ago, Night City has banned all poultry-related meat. If you want to try something new, we can sneak around and get some from the black market, but that stuff is expensive as hell."

Jack, however, saw something else in Carl's expression and words. His mouth fell open as he said in disbelief, "Carl, don't tell me you've really eaten real chicken skewers before."

"Of course I have. That's why I can judge them."

Carl said, "Anyway, I don't want to touch these chicken skewers anymore. Get me something else. Eating this is torture for me."

"You've eaten real chicken skewers, and you hate these synthetic ones that much."

Oliver now believed that Carl had really eaten chicken skewers before. He recalled how Carl had only wanted vegetarian food when he first treated her to a meal. "Were you some corporate young master or something in the past?"

"Would a young master be carrying a Lexington now?"

Carl waved a hand, called over a waitress, and asked her to bring her something else to eat.

Then, before the eyes of Oliver and Jack, who ate while watching, dish after dish arrived. Carl took only one bite from each before setting it aside. The food she could not finish piled up in front of them as they gladly took it for themselves, nearly forming a small mountain.

"Stop, stop, stop, Carl."

Seeing that if Carl kept ordering, he and Jack would be so stuffed their stomachs might burst, Oliver hurriedly stopped Carl from nearly ordering every item on the menu.

Oliver's cheek twitched slightly as he looked at the still-unsatisfied Carl. Covering his forehead, he sighed and said, "Tonkatsu, sushi, sashimi, Japanese curry, and a whole pile of random stuff... Miss, you've nearly ordered the entire menu. Still haven't found anything you like?"

"This really isn't my fault."

Carl said helplessly, "Not a single one of these things is edible. Right now, I'm just glad I've been eating Chinese cold noodles these past two days. Otherwise, I probably would've starved to death first."

"I'm really getting more and more curious about what your life used to be like, Carl."

Jack rubbed his already round belly. "Not just chicken—pork, beef, fish, you've eaten all of them before. What kind of environment did you live in?"

"Probably one where real meat was easy to get."

With a sigh, Carl set her sights on the ochazuke that had arrived last.

Fortunately, the ochazuke did not disappoint Carl. At last, there was something she could eat.

As she ate the ochazuke, Carl felt a little pessimistic.

After eating all this, she had still ended up with a meatless dish. At this rate, would she really only be able to eat vegetarian food in the future?