This blueprint was a mystery to Kit, he had thought of many ways it could be completed. He wouldn’t know for sure until he walked into the new room. He felt his expectations rise from Snickers reaction just now.
“Let’s go!” Kit happily followed a buoyant Snickers towards a door he hadn’t noticed earlier. This was not surprising, he had so much to take in at once. He was sure he would be finding things he hadn’t noticed for a while to come.
As he approached the door, a wave of curiosity spread. This door was different from the others. It had a large flap that covered most of the bottom half of the door. The top half had pictures of Piabbits, Midnight guardians and Snowball.
He placed his hand on the door and pushed, it still functioned like a normal door and swung open. The room was nothing like he expected. Soft couches, floor pillows and small coffee tables were strewn throughout the spacious area.
A counter with a large shiny machine was at the back of the cafe. Behind the counter was various cups in different sizes and dazzling tea pots neatly stacked on shelves. Kit walked over to examine the new silver machine, when he rounded the counter, his jaw dropped.
This was a coffee machine! Greedy eyes ran over the sparkling metal. Kit absolutely loved coffee! It was a pity he hadn’t managed to get his hands on some coffee beans. He added collecting coffee to the top of his list.
“This room is going to be a big hit, I’m sure of it!” Snickers twinkling eyes were scanning the room.
Kit thought about his list of recipes and realised he didn’t have much he could sell in the cafe. Who would want to visit a shop without any variety to choose from? Kit looked at the beaming Snickers and couldn’t muster up her level of enthusiasm for this room being a hit.
A soft thud drew his attention, a Piabbit waltzed through a flap in the wall that connected to the outside of the building. It started grunting at Snickers, Kit didn’t know what to do with the sudden arrival of the Piabbit.
“Ai, we are not open yet.” Snickers rolled her eyes at the small pig. “Out, out.” Snickers started shooing the Piabbit back out the flap it came in.
Kit looked at the flap in the wall and a feeling of dread welled up. “Snickers, the Piabbits are not going to come into the café each day, right?”
“Of course they are, they signed a contract to be one of the café animals. We can’t have an animal café without animals.” Snickers gave him one of her ‘you are being stupid’ looks.
A flash back to the night the Piabbit wreaked havoc through the boarding house floated through Kit’s mind. A groan involuntary left his mouth, “Snickers, this is a bad idea!”
“Nonsense it will be fine, they have calmed down a lot. Plus, we don’t have to pay them!” Snickers pumped her fist, “Kit do you know how many people want to interact with magical creatures, I’ll tell you, almost everyone! I promise you will want to expand this room as soon as possible!”
Kit eye started to twitch, he just hoped Snickers was right and the Piabbits’ would stay calm. He wondered if he could get Bai yue to come and spend time in the animal café, that might help keep the little troublemakers under control.
With a new understanding of what the animal café was, he felt Snickers earlier assessment was right, this place really would be a draw for customers. He just hoped that it didn’t inspire Snowball to start collecting creatures once again.
Kit felt his eye twitch at that thought, he had a bad premonition about the future. He forcefully moved that thought from his mind, it would give him nightmares if he let it linger in his head.
With the tour complete Kit started to wander around his new restaurant taking it all in. He had been so excited to see everything he had only taken a brief look around. Once he was satisfied that he was now familiar with the new layout, Kit went to find Snickers.
He found her with her head down looking over a few scattered papers, “Do you need any help?” Snickers lifted her head then motioned to the chair next to her.
“These are the templates for the menu. I didn’t finalise them because you were still creating meals this week. But I need to put in the final draft today.” Snickers slid over five different menu designs. “I was thinking that we could separate the snacks just to be sold in the shop in a shop.”
“So far, we don’t have much to put on sale in the animal café. It can only sell cakes, pastries and non-alcoholic drinks.” Snicker pushed over three more pieces of paper, each paper had a heading and a list of items to be sold under neath.
He first looked at the designs they had worked on, they had turned out quite well. He then picked up one of the plain pieces of paper.
Restaurant menu
Entrée:
Red blooming Purple tail turtle soup
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Black spotted velvet frogs legs created
Mains:
Wallowing blue poison
Red velvet lake pasta
Glowgo glowing worm salad
Shining razor bear sticky BBQ ribs
Gliding possum stew
Purple squash filled with wild spindly apples, cranberries and bright light mushrooms
Desserts:
Glowgo splice sorbet
Cocoa sorbet
Drinks:
Sweet meadows beer
Lucky sticky apple cider
Spartan Fire rum
Musical spiced rum
Seeing all the items he could sell written down made his eyes glisten, it finally looked like a real menu. Granted he still wanted to add more, it wasn’t as big as he would like it to be.
He then picked up the next single piece of white paper. It had a list of all his snacks, this one was for the shop in a shop. Nineteen snacks filled the page, most of them were his chocolate creations. There was only one snack he had made that he couldn’t sell yet.
The Rainbow crested light step cookies bundle needed a chef level of 70 before he could sell them. He thought about his current level and felt it wouldn’t be long until it was also on the shelves.
Kit moved onto the last piece of paper and frowned. It was set out like his restaurant menu, but this one looked sad. It was divided into three section, non-alcoholic drinks, cakes and pastries. But there was only one item on the whole sheet, Fluffy dragon head tea!
When Snickers said they didn’t have much they could sell in the animal café, he didn’t think she meant one item! Plus, that one items stats were so bad! It only gave 1 Stamina recovery! Kit brow pulled together.
He started to rack his brain for things he could make fast to add to the menu. He still had the rest of today and tomorrow to add a few items. He didn’t want one thing one the menu on his opening day.
Kit pursed his lips and went over what was in his inventory. Getting a small cake and a pastry should be doable before the opening day. As a bonus, he would get to use his new kitchen! “Snickers, use the deep green menu for the restaurant, it will go with the greenery theme.”
“I think a sign with the item and price would be best for the shop in a shop and animal café. Ah wait, do we have time for that?” said Kit.
Snickers nodded, “You’re right that sounds much better for the shop in a shop, but do you think it will be a good idea for the animal café?”
Snickers was biting her nail as she looked at the list in front of Kit. They had both worked so hard on this one star promotion that they didn’t want anything to go wrong. So, the glaring problem unsettled them.
“Let’s leave the sign for the animal café for now, lets just get a black board until we stabilise the menu. I’ll try and complete a few recipes before the one star opening, I’m sure I can make some hot chocolate, a small cake, and a pasty.”
“If only we had known the restrictions for the animal café earlier, we could have prepared better. I’m guessing they only became available today after the restaurant was complete?” Kit’s guess was confirmed when Snickers nodded.
“It’s ok Snickers, we can only do our best. If you need me for anything I’ll be in the kitchen.” Kit left Snickers to her tasks and headed into the kitchen with a large smile. Although they were having some hiccups Kit was too excited to get in his kitchen to really let it bother him.
The kitchen was still empty of his employees when he entered, he was ecstatic to be the first one to tryout all the new appliances. Kit quickly gathered the ingredients he was going to need then got to work.
The first thing he was going to attempt was the hot chocolate, he didn’t think it would take much to get it right.
Kit began to bustle about in his new kitchen, his wide smile couldn’t be wiped off his face. Soon a steaming cup of hot chocolate was in his hands, the only problem was that a notification hadn’t rang.
A frown pulled his brows as he peered into the mug, it smelt amazing was there something wrong with the taste. Kit blew on the contents of the mug then took a shallow sip. When the liquid past his lips, a rich chocolate taste tickled his tongue. It was perfect!
“Haha, why the hell did it not work?” Kit dragged his hand down his cheek in frustration. He continued to sip the sweet drink as he thought about what he could be missing. Then he remembered a conversation he had with his sister.
“Honestly people that come into the café are crazy sometimes Kitty, today this customer wanted only pink marshmallows in her hot chocolate. She said white marshmallows gave her bad luck! How can marshmallows give you bad luck!” Kat had truly been stumped that day.
A smile tugged at his lips, could it be that simple? Kit purchased some marshmallows and prepared another cup of steaming chocolate. He dropped three marshmallows into the liquid.
Ding!
[Hot cocoa created]
Quality level: Good
Quality bonus: + 3 Charisma.
A delicious hot chocolate drink that boosts the mood.
+ 2 charisma
For 1 hour
[Unlocked: Nil level restriction.]
Reward: 500 EXP, 500 culinary EXP, 5 silver crowns, 100 culinary points.
Yes, thankyou Kat! It really was the marshmallows. Kit felt his already jubilant mood intensify, he couldn’t wait to move on to another recipe, preferably one that used more of his new appliances!
He looked over at the new ovens with twinkling eyes, next he was going to create a chocolate mud cake! The incredibly rich and moist cake was a chocolate lovers dream! Kit felt like he was becoming a bit obsessed with chocolate now, but he couldn’t help himself, it made the most delicious treats!
A bunch of ingredients sat in front of him as he came back from preheating the oven. The most eye catching was the brightly coloured eggs. He pushed them to the back of the bench and pulled all the dry ingredients closer.
He sifted the flour, sugar, cocoa powder, baking powder and salt into a bowl. He then mixed the white and dark brown powder together, once combined it turned into a light brown powder.
He picked up some of the coloured eggs and knocked them against the side of a new bowl. Soon gooey eggs were swimming in the bottom, he then added buttermilk, vegetable oil, and vanilla. Kit then started to rummage through his cupboards for a beater.
“Damn it, how is there no electric beater available!” Kit felt the muscles in his arms spasm when he thought he would have to do it by hand. He quickly opened the restaurant menu to see if a beater blueprint was available.
“You have to be kidding me!” The only option was a whisk, Kit felt like crying. With all the new appliances available to him he had been positive he could finally give his arm a rest. It looked like he was still going to get a workout from cooking.
Kit resigned himself to the task and soon had the wet ingredients mixed, he then gradually added the dry ingredients and worked up a sweat until everything was a brown blend. He prepared a cake tray and poured the mixture in.
When he opened the oven door a puff of hot air hit his face, he slid the pan in. While he waited for the cake to bake, he turned his thoughts towards what pastries he could make. Chocolate was still on his mind so the first recipe to pop into his head was a chocolate éclair!